


Done With Bonaparte

by imachar



Series: The Weight of a Man [16]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chris lives, Harrison isn't Khan, M/M, Minor James T. Kirk/Leonard "Bones" McCoy, Minor Original Character(s), Mission Fic, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:22:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25413112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imachar/pseuds/imachar
Summary: What if the meeting to discuss John Harrison hadn't been held in the most vulnerable room at Starfleet HQ? What if Chris walked out of HQ that night to captain the Enterprise and hunt down Marcus. What if John Harrison WASN"T Khan?
Relationships: Philip Boyce/Christopher Pike
Series: The Weight of a Man [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/9895
Comments: 22
Kudos: 34





	1. Daystrom

**Author's Note:**

> A/N I: This story is designed to be an alternate ending to **If This is Goodbye** You can read it as a stand alone (in which case you need to know that Alice is Chris's mother) But it will make a lot more sense if you read Chapters 1 and 2 of If This is Goodbye first. Of course, it will make a lot more sense if you read the entire **Weight of A Man** series first, but again, not necessary. 
> 
> A/N II: As always many, many thanks to **zauzat** best beta ever; this story is four thousand words longer, and so much improved thanks to your questions, edits and suggestions. 
> 
> A/N III: This is the first PIke/Boyce story I've written in years - **Into Darkness** killed my muse for a while, but I always wanted to get back to writing them in an alternate universe where Chris didn't die that night. 
> 
> A/N IV: The Starfleet history referenced in this story is largely from ST: Enterprise, both the episodes and the companion books. 
> 
> A/N V: The Enterprise in this series is the original TOS ship, as depicted in the 1973 blueprints. That's why, even though we never see them on the show, she has ladderways between decks. I've made a few changes; reducing the number of emergency transporter pads and (not necessary in this story but in the ones to come) adding emergency escape pods.

Save my soul from evil, Lord  
And heal this soldier's heart.  
I'll trust in thee to keep me, Lord  
I'm done with Bonaparte.

Mark Knopfler

“It’s gonna’ be okay, son.” Chris glances briefly at Jim, his smile a flicker of reassurance before he looks down into the thick-walled whisky glass that is cupped in his hands, giving his new XO a moment to compose himself. There’s relief and gratitude and, more troubling, but not surprising, a barely hidden hint of resentment in Jim Kirk’s face, his eyes suspiciously bright and his smile shaky as he looks away, attention suddenly riveted on the contents of his own glass. Chris reins in his urge to tell Jim just how much he is personally putting on the line to facilitate this second chance; Jim is young and able and ambitious, and his life has been turned upside down in the last twenty-four hours. It’s going to take a more than a pat on the shoulder and a glass of whisky for him to regain his equilibrium. 

Then, before either of them gets a chance to break the tension with their customary sarcasm or humor, Chris’s communicator vibrates, thrumming against his hip. In a single practiced motion, he extracts and opens it, one eyebrow canting up at the terse message outlined in the red flag notification of a _level five coded straight from the C-in-C_ missive.

[White ensign muster; Secure.]

His heart misses a beat as he registers the implications of the message and sweat prickles along his hairline as he reluctantly recalls the last time he’d seen those words. Sent from the same Commander-in-Chief to all the senior staff gathered in Cochrane Hall for Jim’s disciplinary hearing, summoning them to be briefed on the distress call from Vulcan. For many of the home fleet that day the summons had been a death sentence, and for Chris, it had been an invitation to two years of loss and pain and trauma from which he is only now emerging. The sharp familiar twist of survivor guilt slips through him as he takes a deep even breath and then, flipping his comm shut, he swivels on his barstool and thumps Jim lightly on the arm. “That’s us, better suit up.”

There’s a staff car waiting as they exit the bar and Chris waits for Jim to slide in behind him before leaning forward to direct the driver. “Fleet HQ, but first we need to make a stop at Ndebele Hall.” He checks with Jim “You’re billeted in the old Academy apartments at Fort Mason, yes?” 

After a moment Jim nods, his face reflecting the shock and disappointment of losing the Enterprise, he’s clearly still a little stunned by the swift reversal of his fortunes. “Yeah, we’ve got an apartment on the top floor, but I can get myself to HQ on the flash rail if you need to just drop me and keep going.”

“I think we can spare five minutes, if you move your ass.”

“So, what’s up?”

Chris shows him the message. “I have no idea why we’re meeting, although I suspect it has something to do with the London bombing. But this specific coded message is a signal for all the captains and XOs of the home fleet that is in close-orbit, to meet for a briefing at Fleet HQ.”

“Daystrom?”

“No, _secure_ is code for meeting in the Bunker.”

Jim looks puzzled and Chris is reminded again just how inexperienced he is, and just how reckless Command had been when they’d given him the Enterprise a little under a year before. The rationale at the time had been superficially persuasive, at least to those making the decisions. The Fleet needed a young, fresh heroic crew to take the flagship out and do the rounds of the member systems; to reassure them that there was new leadership at HQ and that the mistakes that had led to the Narada incursion and the loss of Vulcan would not be allowed to happen again. None of that had convinced Chris that Jim was the person to lead that effort. He has enormous potential, but there’s a reason that prior to the relaunch of the Enterprise in early 2259, the least flexible rule of the promotion board had been that everyone had to serve four years in the deep space service before they were eligible for command school. No one got to second officer or higher without that combination of training and deep space experience. So now it’s no surprise that without those customary years of in-service training before earning a ship of his own, without the inevitable year or two in the Home Fleet – the White Ensign fleet as it is known in code – Jim has never had any reason to visit the Bunker. The attack-hardened facility in the sub-basement of the Fleet HQ building that sits on the north-eastern edge of the old Embarcadero at 101 Lombard St. 

“You’ll see when we get there, just stay with me.”

Seconds later the car pulls through the entry gate of Fort Mason, the eastern extension of the Presidio base that houses most of the third- and fourth-year cadets, as well as many of the Academy staff. Ndebele Hall, newly renovated and repurposed for short term officer billets sits on Franklin, with a view all the way to Coit Tower and the mega-talls around Starfleet HQ on the Embarcadero. At least they’d given Jim a room with a view. 

“I’ll be right back.” Jim hesitates, frowning before asking, with barely masked resentment, “My uniform…” he pauses again, and Chris is pretty sure he knows what’s coming, holding up a hand to forestall Jim’s question. 

“You’re probably going to get busted down one rank; but just one, I’m not having an XO on the flagship that’s under commander rank. But for tonight, this is an emergency, just wear the grays you have available. Accurate rank insignia is the least of our worries.”

A quick intake of breath, as if he’s going to argue, and then Jim swallows back whatever he’s about to say and nods, decisive. “Okay, give me five minutes.”

“I’ll be here.”

In the brief respite, Chris takes the opportunity to fire off a quick message to Phil, working late at Medical as he plows through the latest round of semi-annual performance reviews for the surgical teams. 

[Found, Jim. If you see Bones, tell him all is well.]

[Will do. Are you on your way home?]

[No, got a meeting at HQ; will contact you if we’re going to be mobilized.] He omits to mention that it’s a Level 5 briefing, there’s no point in worrying Phil unnecessarily and they’ll have time to talk more once Chris has some more accurate information. 

[Okay, I’m here until at least noon tomorrow. Keep me in the loop and Chris, stay safe.]

The ground-car door opens just as Chris goes to finish with something a little more personal than should strictly be transmitted on Starfleet open channels. Chris has no idea what’s about to go down, but the overtones of the Narada debacle are strong, and Phil’s “stay safe” is a reminder that at least part of Starfleet’s raison d'être requires periodically going into harm’s way for the greater good. But then Jim is sliding back in beside him on the seat, and he settles for an anodyne. [You too.]

The car is moving as soon as Jim fixes his seat restraint and he turns to Chris, face devoid of its earlier sullen cast, his equilibrium at least partly restored now that he’s back in uniform. It’s hard to keep Jim subdued for long, something Chris finds both encouraging and frankly terrifying. As convinced as he is Jim has the potential to be among the best Starfleet can train if he can just get a couple of years of practical mentorship out in the black, Chris knows that giving Jim his second chance is playing roulette with his own career. If this goes sideways – and with Jim’s penchant for reckless thinking outside the box sideways is a definite possibility – Command is going to have Chris back on Earth commanding a desk until retirement. 

But there are debts to be paid here, to the memory of George – and to the promise he made to Win after she found out about the whole “I dare you to do better” thing – and to all of the mentors who had kept his own career on the straight and narrow when he could so easily have crashed and burned in those early years when he was busy proving he was good enough to be Josh Pike’s son. And, above all, to the potential that he picked off a Riverside barroom floor. Jim is here, in this car, in this uniform, because of a split-second choice that Chris made five years ago, and he owes it to Jim to see that choice through, even if it turns the rest of his hair gray in the process. 

So, Chris tilts his head, inquiring, “Any thoughts on what is going on?”

“The London bombing; it has to be.” The confidence is encouraging, the subdued, downcast figure from the bar is gone, Jim is focused and intent and Chris nods in confirmation. 

“I think that’s the most likely possibility. Why don’t you walk me through all the possible reasons you think Command would convene a meeting of the home fleet senior staff in the wake of a terrestrial-based attack on a Fleet facility.”

The ground car slows to make the busy intersection at Columbus, and then picks up speed again as Jim launches into an incisive, if entirely too superficial, analysis of possible mission objectives for the Home Fleet in the next few hours and days. His evaluation of the potential threat is excellent but, lacking critical knowledge about Starfleet’s threat-response capacity in Sector One, he doesn’t have the background to formulate a credible plan of interdiction. 

Still so much to learn. 

*****

The Bunker isn’t designed for large groups of people. By its very nature, it’s a secure, clandestine location, so space for the twenty-six senior officers and – Chris counts them – fifteen fleet staff, at least half of whom are dressed in the distinctive black of SI, is at a premium. But the conference table has clearly been prepped for the actual flight officers and Chris finds no small amount of amusement in the less-than-dignified scramble for seating as the intelligence operatives try to find places for themselves along the walls. Still, he does a little shuffling of his own. Cognizant of the palpable tension between Jim and Spock – they had studiously ignored each other in the short turbolift down to the sub-basement – he finds a space on the far side of the conference table, motioning for Jim to join him before he turns to talk to Captain Ntuli of the USS Amur who is sitting to his right. 

Catching up on the Amur’s refit, Chris isn’t paying attention to the rest of the table and it’s only when Jim nudges him that he looks up to find that they’re being graced with the presence of the Commander-in-Chief himself. As he sweeps into the room, attended by his own small army of staffers, Admiral Alex Marcus looks like he’s loaded for bear.

“Thank you all for convening at such short notice. I’m sure by now all of you have been made aware of the attack on the Starfleet data archive in London earlier today.” 

There’s a murmur of assent from the assembled officers and before it can get any traction and send the meeting off track Marcus raises a hand for silence. “We lost forty-two people in that explosion, and thanks to a message sent directly to me from the bomber himself and SI’s rapid analysis of the security data, we now know that this man…” a face appears on the data screens set into the table in front of each seat, “…is responsible for planning and executing the carnage.”

After a brief pause to let the image sink in, Marcus goes on, his voice rougher and dark with anger as he growls. “His name is Commander John Harrison, and he is one of our own.”

A shocked whisper ripples around the room, manifesting as a collective intake of breath and a sharp murmur of conversation. Chris frowns, as Chief of Operations he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all of Starfleet’s active duty senior officers; and, while there are over four thousand personnel at the rank of commander and above, he’s confident he could at least recognize the face of any one of them. In his peripheral vision he can see Jim’s brow furrowing, a question in his eyes and Chris shakes his head to forestall any commentary, whispering, “Not one of “ours” ours. I’m pretty sure he’s SI.”

Before Jim can respond Chris finds himself on the receiving end of a withering stare from the Commander in Chief. “Problem, Chris?” Marcus’s tone is sharper than his words and Chris shakes his head, quick and decisive. 

“No, sir, just an observation on Mr. Harrison.”

“Something you’d like to share with us?”

It most certainly is not something Chris would like to share with the assembled group, if Harrison really is SI then Marcus must be aware of it, and presumably has his own reasons for implying that he’s an active-duty command officer. And it’s not like this is the first time the Commander in Chief has elided the truth for the sake of immediate results. Marcus is well known for riding roughshod over the opinions of the more temperate members of the General Staff.

“No sir, just conferring with my new XO.” 

There’s a brief flash of anger in Marcus’s eyes, he’s clearly not about to forgive Chris for the way he manipulated their earlier meeting. His face flushed, and fingers tense on the conference table, he’s struggling to keep his temper in check, but he’s professional enough to contain his ire, confining himself to a terse nod. 

“Well, if you’ve got anything important to add, now’s the time because I am tasking you all with running this bastard down.”

Marcus has the attention of the entire room as he goes on to outline the strategy for containing all intra-system traffic for the next 24 hours and has just started to make specific ship assignments when the table vibrates hard, bouncing up and shunting a couple of centimeters to one side as everyone feels the room shudder. 

“Under the table!” The order comes from a voice by the doors and someone else calls out “Earthquake!”

Growing up in a town just west of the East California Sheer Zone, Chris has been attuned to ground shaking events since birth, but even as Jim slides their chairs back and pulls him under the table, Chris knows it doesn’t feel quite right. The familiar shunt of the P-waves, followed by the rolling motion of the S-waves is missing, instead the entire structure shudders as a screeching impact vibrates through the frame of the building. 

“We’re under fire. Secure the room.” 

The melee of voices is suddenly drowned out by the sound of shattering glass and the solid crunch of several tonnes of something hitting the ground three floors above them. The wail of impact alarms enhances the eerie red glow of the emergency lighting system and Chris grabs Jim as he tries to get out from under the conference table. “Wait.” He enunciates it clearly, but silently, no point in trying to compete with the shriek of the alarms.

Jim frowns, barely visible in the reduced light, clearly impatient to see what is going on, and Chris clamps his hand firmly on his wrist, restraining him. Until they have more information on the nature of the threat, exposing themselves to it is unnecessarily rash. The rest of the room likewise remains crouched under tables and desks, waiting, silent as the dust settles around them. 

*****

When the alarms finally go silent, and the lighting returns to normal, Marcus is spirited away by SI while everyone else is held in the bunker until security confirms that there is no ongoing threat. It’s a little after twenty-three hundred by the time they are released and as they emerge into the large glass-walled foyer of the South Tower Jim takes a step back almost running into Chris, lagging a little behind. 

“Damn, that made a mess.”

Massive construction floodlights have been set up in the plaza between the two mega-talls, a handful of them illuminating a crash site at the base of the North tower and the rest splaying up the shattered glass wall, following a path of destruction that extends almost all the way up the building, terminating at a gaping hole on the 80th floor. 

“Daystrom.”

The single word rolls across them in Frank Abbott’s distinctive baritone growl. And Chris catches the almost imperceptible shiver that ripples across Jim’s shoulders, even as the hair prickles on the nape of his own neck. One slight shift in the orders – the determination that the risk was sufficient to convene senior officers in the bunker rather than the more conventional Daystrom conference room – had saved them all.

“We were lucky.”

“Others not so much, I suspect.” From behind them the voice of Tovah Ben-Zvi, captain of the USS Zambezi, reminds the group of the carnage they narrowly avoided, and Chris follows her gaze up to the shattered glass and twisted plasteel of the North Tower. He shivers again, reminded of Alice’s aphorism about someone walking over his grave, and then shakes off the feeling, there’s still a long night ahead of them, and work to be done. 

Chris lays a hand on Jim’s back before they part ways. “This isn’t over yet; go home, but make sure your field bag is packed.”

And then, as Jim heads out towards the tunnel down to the flash rail, his comm in his hand, Chris pulls out his own comm and swipes a thumb across Phil’s name. He’s not surprised to get an immediate, in person, response. He doesn’t know exactly what information has come out about the attack, but Phil has to be aware, at a very minimum, that there have been casualties at HQ this evening. 

[Thank, Christ…you’re okay?]

[I’m fine, we were in the bunker, we barely even felt it.] 

After checking why Phil is not in surgery – the most critical needs are ortho and neuro, not cardio-thoracic – Chris offers to pick up food on his way over to Phil’s office in the Medical complex, laughing as Phil declines with a caveat.

[I don’t need dinner, but if you’re going to pick something up, bring me dessert, the replicator bread and butter pudding was a serious disappointment.]

[Will do; I’m just waiting for a ground car, maybe fifteen minutes]

[I’ll be in my office.]

****

“That was a rough couple of hours.” Phil almost manages to keep his voice level, but Chris can hear the tremor in it and as the door whuffs shut behind him he leans his cane up against the wall and sets the bag of take-out down on the floor.

“I know, I’m sorry, there was a complete communication lockdown.” He holds out a hand to reel Phil into a hug, tight with remorse and relief. The lockdown hadn’t stopped Chris from trying to contact Phil, and the futility of each failed attempt, the screen bright with the stark-white text of the standard Starfleet lockdown response…

[Message redirected to holding file - transmission blocked at this time]

… had made him edgy and irritated with worry. Reminded of the conversation he’d had with his mother the night before, her gentle admonition that, between Chris’s long recovery from his Narada injuries and his recent stroke, Phil had endured more than his fair share of stress over the past year. As much as Chris loves the thought of going back out in the black, it pains him to know how much of a strain it will put on Phil; the separation is hard enough, but even on the relatively low-stakes missions that have been lined up for the Enterprise, the risk of death and injury will be an ever present worry when Chris is out of contact. If nothing else, tonight is a reminder that there is no such thing as a safe billet in Starfleet.

The hug lingers and Chris relaxes into it, taking one long moment to tune out all the stress and anxiety of the last few hours, and all the adrenaline-filled possibilities of what the rest of the night will bring. Letting himself be soothed by the warm, wiry strength of a body that he knows as well as he knows his own, he leans in harder and whispers. 

“Love you. Meant to say it when I texted earlier.”

Phil pulls back just far enough to look Chris in the face, one eyebrow raised, the hint of a smile curling his mouth. “Having a “fuck I nearly died” moment?” And Chris laughs, rueful and self-deprecating; and relieved that Phil is making light of it. 

“Yeah, and...” he pauses, takes a breath before admitting… “I don’t say it nearly enough.”

Phil gives him a squeeze and releases him with another brief smile. “You’re forgiven, this time. Now, where’s my dessert?”

Both leaning back in their chairs, with their feet on opposite sides of Phil’s desk, their conversation focuses on speculation about the attack, Phil getting increasingly pessimistic about Starfleet’s chances of stopping these kinds of lone-wolf incidents until Chris holds up his fork and waves it distractedly at Phil. “Okay, we’re not getting anywhere with this, and I don’t want to think about it right now – change of subject. Give me odds on us winning the Pacific Coast Conference next month”

The Academy has its best hockey team in a decade and Phil, always an avid hockey fan has been to every home game of the season; there is no better topic to lift him out of his increasingly melancholy mood. 

He takes a moment to think, and Chris waves his fork again, urging him on “Come on, I know you went out for a beer with Torvesen after last week’s win; what does he think?”

“Most of the time he thinks being the team doctor for a bunch of hormone-overloaded adrenaline junkies is a pain in the ass; but…” a pause as Phil savors a little more desert and then goes on, “… he thinks they have it in the bag. We’ve got four more games; three at home and all against teams in the bottom half of the conference. And Ka’aukai is in great shape.”

Chris is skeptical, “Ka’aukai might be the best scorer we’ve had in a decade, but he can’t carry the team himself. The Huskies and the Bears are way deeper in offensive strength.” He gestures with the last of his naan before using it to wipe up the remnants of his _tariwala gosht_ , about to continue when his communicator buzzes sharply and skitters across the top of Phil’s desk. 

He licks his fingers and then grabs it before it can jitter itself off onto the floor. As much as he might like to not answer it, he was right when he told Jim that the night was far from over, Harrison is almost certainly still at large and if he’s managed to leave Earth the original charge from Marcus still stands, they need to hunt him down. Ignoring the impatience in Phil’s go-on-answer-it, gesture, he picks up the comm unit to find a message from Admiral Jonathan Henry Archer, the most recent in a long line of Admirals Archer. 

He sighs, sends an acknowledgment, and then flips the communicator closed, stowing it even as he goes to lever himself out of the chair. “It’s a summons. My presence is required by the Chief of Staff.” 

“That can’t be good.” Phil pushes the container with the last of his _gajar ka halwa_ away and stretches back in his desk chair, his head tilted, concern in writ plain on his face. 

“No, and it can’t be ignored either. While I call a car, can you contact Enterprise? Quintero should be on duty, make sure he has everything set up for me.” Earlier in the day, in anticipation of resuming command of the Enterprise, Chris had begun the process of shipping his mission gear up to the ship. Two standard-issue storage boxes and his mission-duffle should have been transported up to his quarters by the middle of the day. He had intended to see to the disposition of the contents himself over the next week or two, but that seems like an unlikely luxury right now, and his alpha-shift yeoman, Ben Quintero will just have to deal with it.

“I’m not going to see you at home later, am I?” Phil comes out from behind his desk and the undisguised worry in his eyes cuts through Chris in a sharp aching pang, guilt momentarily overriding the adrenaline that’s starting to kick in at the thought of a new mission. He shakes his head. “I doubt it. There’s still a better than even chance this mess is going to require us to deploy, even if it’s only for a few days.”

“Okay, well…” Phil steps close and Chris meets him, sliding a hand around Phil’s waist gripping close as they lean into another hug, tight and tense with an unspoken farewell. “…stay safe.”

“Always.”

****

“Glad you could join us, Chris.”

As Archer holds wide the office door, Chris steps past him and is more than a little surprised to find one of the short couches opposite the desk occupied by Admiral Josh Pike, Starfleet Inspector General. His father is frowning at Jon, worry creasing the deeply entrenched lines between his heavy silver eyebrows, and Chris can feel the tension in the room. It bodes ill that he’s been called into a meeting with the two senior staff officers responsible for the internal regulation of Starfleet personnel; it seems a little like overkill for one rogue Lieutenant Commander, even if he is SI. 

“Sir, I didn’t know you were back from Paris.”

“Just a few hours ago.” Josh waves Chris over, indicating the unoccupied couch adjacent and Chris leans his cane up against the wall before stepping across the short distance, consciously straightening his stance and suppressing the slight limp that has only intensified as the evening has dragged on into the early morning. 

“So, what is the Inspector General’s office interest in this evening’s events?” Josh’s presence is baffling and more than a little disturbing and, as another shiver of apprehension traces across his nape, Chris has the sense that something much more serious than just the disappearance of one rogue SI agent is going down. 

Josh frowns, eyebrows drawn into a tight, tense line. “I’m about to issue an arrest warrant for the Commander in Chief.”

That was not where Chris was expecting the conversation to go, and he drops carefully onto the second couch, taking a moment to parse this new information before he asks. “What am I missing?” Tilting his head so he can look across at the Chief of Staff he frowns at Jon, who directs a worried glance at back at Josh Pike. 

A shrug and Josh waves his hand “He’s Chief of Ops for the Blue Fleet, Jon. I think we have to read him in on this.”

Assuming they are just referring to his security status and not his actual position, Chris doesn’t bother to point out that as of oh-nine-thirty this morning he’s actually the Captain of the Enterprise and Hanna Nusseibeh is the new Chief of Operations for the Federation’s Expedition fleet – the Blue Fleet. Instead, he focuses on the fact that they need to read him in, something that he’s rarely found to be a good omen. Chris’s security clearance is as high as it gets for a staff officer who isn’t at the executive level of Starfleet Command, if he has to be read in it means they are dealing with compartmentalized – Q-level – security information. He gestures impatiently at his father, getting a raised eyebrow that manages to covey both “patience” and “don’t sass me, boy” in one succinct gesture. Then he stretches out a hand as Archer leans over his desk and hands him a padd with a security agreement on it. “Sign it, you know the drill.” 

A quick scrawl with a stylus and Chris is once more in compliance with regulations and he hands the padd back across the desk. “So, what do I need to know?”

Jon sighs and leans back in his chair. “It would take several days to get you up to speed on this so I’m going to give you the quick and dirty version.”

“Wait.” Josh stalls with a raise of one finger. “We could probably all use a scotch if we’re going to start digging up the dirtiest of Starfleet’s secrets. Can I raid your stash, Jon?”

Chris really doesn’t like the sound of that. His interest in Starfleet history has led him down dozens of interesting rabbit-holes over the years, many of them classified, and many of them leading to less-than-laudatory moments in Starfleet’s history. The betrayal of the Vulcan listening post at P’Jem, the indecision over Coridon and Denobula at the beginning of the Romulan War; hell, the real story of the Kobayashi Maru hardly reflected well on Jon’s grandfather, even though his hands had been tied by orders from Command.

As he pulls a decanter and several glasses out of a cabinet on the far wall Josh asks, “We’re secure here?”

And Jon affirms, “I had the office swept two days ago, it was clean then.”

Chris goes still, apprehension chasing adrenaline, as his heart rate trips up and he asks, with disbelief in his voice, “What in the fuck is going on that you need to sweep a Starfleet admiral’s office for SI bugs?”

“Not SI.” After handing a generously filled whisky glass to Archer, Josh starts to hand the other to Chris, before he hesitates, and Chris rolls his eyes. “Yes, I ordered one at McConville’s, but I barely tasted it before we were called away. This won’t call down the wrath of Phil on you, don’t worry.” 

Josh grins, just a twist of his lips under the heavy silver mustache, and hands over the glass. “I can handle Phil, it’s your mother I’m afraid of.”

“Stop equivocating. What do you mean “Not SI”? Who else would bugging Jon’s office?” Chris turns to the Chief of Staff, “You’re not worried about Federation allies, are you? I know the Andorian High Command isn’t exactly thrilled that we’re not supporting their “go beat up on the Klingons while they’re down” rhetoric.”

“No; hell no.” Jon pauses to breathe in the whisky, and Chris can’t tell whether he’s still hesitant about letting Chris in on the secrecy, or if he’s just trying to organize an abbreviated version of the story in his head. Josh fills in the silence.

“This is not about the Andorians, this is very much our own dirty linen.” He settles into the low couch, leaning way back into the cushions and setting a pair of incongruously non-regulation — if pristinely polished — matte-black, cowboy boots on the corner of the expensive synthetic-mahogany coffee table that separates the couches; looking into the depths of his own whisky before he begins. “So, you know we’ve been investigating Wainwright since he stepped down as head of SI?”

Chris nods, once, terse and annoyed. Given that Admiral Wainwright had tried to make him the Starfleet scapegoat for the Narada incident Chris is very well aware that the Inspector General’s office has been investigating him for intelligence overreach — Starfleet’s polite term for civil right violations — since he was forced to resign almost two years before. 

“Well, it turns out that both he and Puresh Ananthamurthy were instrumental in getting Section 31 back up and running a few years ago. When we pulled them both out of SI and put Chang and El-Niamey in as Chief and XO that part of the operation went underground again.”

As familiar as he is with Starfleet operations and history, what Chris knows about Section 31 would barely fill a double scroll of his padd, and none of it is good. Highly secretive, funded by credits skimmed from legitimate appropriations, the shadow organization has operated as a deep-cover version of Starfleet Intelligence since before the founding of the Federation. At various times it has been exposed, most notably in the late 22nd century by a former operative named “Lazarus” who blew the lid off a series of Federation attempts to undermine the Romulan Imperial family and destabilize the Empire. But it has always come back; tasked with doing the unthinkable, the covert, unethical, amoral dirty jobs that protect the interests of the Federation while violating every principle for which it stands. 

“So, who took control?” He knows the answer even as he asks the question, understanding that it’s not good as the Chief of Staff hesitates and glances at the ceiling for a moment. “Alex?”

Jon drops his gaze back to the room and nods slowly. “Yeah, Alex. We’ve known for a few months that we had covert ops taking place on Earth itself. But we had no idea who was behind it. Then tonight it became really obvious.”

There’s a part of Chris that’s not really surprised, Alex Marcus has always projected a charismatic mixture of arrogance, competence and a slightly sinister intensity. “What kind of covert ops?” And Chris flashes back to Marcus’s oddly intense behavior in the meeting earlier that evening. His determination that they spare no effort in hunting Harrison down, even to the extent of using the archaic concept of wanting him brought in “dead or alive”. 

“The Kelvin Archive was a little more than a data archive. It turns out that Section 31 has been using it as a secret experimental weapons facility.”

“In the middle of London?”

“In the middle of London.” The anger in Jon’s dark eyes is bright and sharp and he rubs a hand through his cropped salt and pepper curls, frustration bleeding off him in waves. “And yes, that means that Starfleet is technically in breach of every interplanetary and international convention going all the way back to the Lieber Code.”

Chris pauses as he parses all this new information and then comes back around to the critical topic of the evening, and then asks, “So how does Harrison fit into this? Is he connected to Section 31?”

“In a way, yes. But be patient, it takes a while to get to that part of the story.” Jon pauses again, takes another sip of his whisky and then begins to explain. 

There is no record of Commander John Harrison existing prior to June 2257, until he comes into existence working for SI at the London office. Right at the time that Marcus was Chief of Staff-Europe. Marcus, who was intimately involved in Section 31, and had been ever since Ananthamurthy had reauthorized funding back in the late-2240s. When he had become Commander-in-Chief two years previous, he had kept the Section 31 portfolio as part of his remit, expanding the operations from off-world surveillance and espionage to weapons development and political maneuvering within Starfleet itself. 

Chris frowns, recalling the months of heated altercations that had accompanied the cluster-fuck of blame and recrimination that had come out of the Narada incident. In the immediate aftermath, Starfleet Intelligence had, quite rightly, taken most of the blame, and Admiral Wainwright had found himself relieved of duty and eventually court-martialed once the internal investigation had found evidence of a massive program of information manipulation that had downplayed any threats coming from the Klingons. The court-marital had been closed because of the sensitivity of the information used to indict the senior SI officers who were charged and, much as he despised Wainwright, the whole affair had struck Chris at the time as just a little too speedily resolved. Wainwright out, replaced by the much more politically acceptable Chang.

“So, you’re saying Marcus was part of SI’s disinformation campaign, and he threw Wainwright under the bus to keep the Section 31 connection secret?”

“That’s what it looks like. By sacrificing Wainwright, Marcus made sure we didn’t look any further. He divorced Section 31 from SI, which has been done many times in the past, and left Chang to run a sanitized intelligence operation, while he continued to further the clandestine plans put in motion by Ananthamurthy when he resuscitated Section 31 eight years ago.”

“That’s all very cloak and dagger.” Chris rolls the whisky glass around in his hands, appreciating the rich, peaty fumes – Jon’s taste in single malts has always been exemplary – before he bites the bullet and asks, “So, what have they been doing?”

“A number of unsavory things.” Archer swipes a thumb across his padd and pulls up a series of files onto the wall opposite and there’s a long space of silence as the two older men give Chris a chance to absorb the wealth of complex information that is suddenly in front of him. Amid the weapons specs and strategic maps, the lists of covert agent aliases and local informants, there is one word that catches Chris’s attention. 

“Isfahan? Is that referring to the Isfahan Archive?”

Jon nods, and Josh chimes in, “We didn’t believe it either.”

“I thought it was a myth. Even after they excavated the silos, no one was ever able to reconstruct the data banks.” The Isfahan Archive had famously held all the records from the World Ark project, a semi-clandestine organization that had sprung up towards the end of WWIII and that had worked to move as many humans off Earth as possible. Governments, private groups even NGOs had all put up money to fund a huge sleeper-ship project that had sent thousands of warp two tugs into space, each pair of engines towing between four and eight sleeper “arks”. Each ark holding tens of thousands of chemically-suspended adults together with tools, food, embryonic animals and, in many cases, thousands of fertilized human eggs. 

In the technologically and climatically challenged chaos that had followed the war, the program had continued, launched from a series of sites in the least damaged areas of Earth, central Africa, the Tibetan plateau, the Brazilian grasslands, the Australian outback. 

“We thought so too, but apparently, SI has been working on reconstruction for the last decade and Section 31 has been utilizing the database for the last four or five years.”

“How does that relate to Marcus, or Harrison?”

“Once they started going through the records on all the sleeper-ship launches one that popped out was the SS Botany Bay.”

That makes Chris sit up. “The Botany Bay?”

“The very same.” Jon pulls up the record in question, and Chris finds himself staring at a piece of Earth’s history. The technical specifications, cargo manifest and crew list of the SS Botany Bay; the ship that had spirited Khan Noonien Singh and his collection of super-human, genocidal maniacs away from Earth before they could be incarcerated, or even tried, for their crimes against hundreds of millions of people during the Eugenics Wars. 

Once again, Chris is not sure he wants to know where this story is going, nothing that involves Khan and his augments could possibly turn out well. 

“Alex decided that Section 31’s weapons division could use a little super-human expertise. So, he got astro-cart to do a course trajectory, sent out a couple of Section 31 ships, and tracked down the Botany Bay. It turns out 73 of the crew were still alive in stasis, so he brought them back to Earth; then woke up one of the Augments…one Alaric West renamed him, John Harrison, gave him a Starfleet commission and put him to work creating high energy projectile weapons.” 

Yep, definitely all kinds of protentional for things going badly. “What went wrong?”

“We’re not entirely sure yet, either Harrison felt he was being coerced into something unethical, or he just got tired of doing Alex’s bidding. But it appears he wanted out and Alex was holding the other 72 members of the Botany Bay crew hostage, including the main man himself.”

Khan

“So, Harrison, West, whatever we want to call him, lost it, decided to take down the weapons facility and exact a little payback on Starfleet Command.”

“Thank god for emergency protocols.”

“It would have been a hell of a mess if you’d been meeting in Daystrom. They’re still clearing the floors below, ironically the main casualties have been in the SI analysis center on the 78th and 79th floors.”

“Yeah, and that’s not the worst of it. As of 22:53 this evening Alex has gone missing. When he left the South Tower he took a shuttle to a private launch facility on Mars, after that we lost track of him.”

“How the fuck do you lose track of the Commander in Chief, isn’t he chipped like the rest of us?”

“He is, that’s how we know he got to Mars. But when we tried to contact him, there was no response and when we sent in a team to pick him up we found his chip, but not the man himself.” 

Chris winces at the thought of someone digging out their own PDT and Jon waves distractedly at him. “He had someone surgically remove it, whatever he’s up to, he’s got a plan.”

All three of them pause at the thought that the Commander in Chief of Starfleet has been planning to go rogue. 

“This just doesn’t seem like Marcus.” Jon leans back in his chair, staring into the depths of his scotch. 

“Yeah, when I walked into the building this evening, I really didn’t think we’d be dealing with the CinCFleet going off-piste.” Josh scrubs a hand through his short, silver-gray hair. “But, here we are.”

Chris is reluctant to contradict two of the most powerful figures in Command, especially the one which whom he shares DNA, but Alex Marcus has always struck him as just a little too tightly wound. There have been too many incidents in the last two years where Marcus had been the voice of the hawks in the Fleet, impatient at the way the most of Command, focused on exploration and diplomacy, resisted his attempts to accelerate ship production and weapons development. “Oh, I don’t know about that, he’s always been a little paranoid about threats to the Federation.”

“Well, the Powers-that-Be didn’t necessarily see that as a bad thing, particularly in the years following the loss of the Kelvin. Even if we have had to rein in his enthusiasm for getting into border skirmishes with the Klingons over the last couple of years.”

“So, where do we think he’s gone?”

“I was at a loss on that until he… “Jon gestures to Josh, “…sent me a comm about half an hour ago. Josh, if you please.” 

Ten minutes later Chris sits back and silently studies the monstrous ship that Marcus has appropriated; the whisky gone sour and acrid on his tongue at Jon’s closing statement; Marcus was headed for Qo’nos.

“Our focus now has to be on stopping him. And, to that end, Chris, we need Enterprise ready to depart Spacedock within the next four hours.”

That’s less lead time than Chris had been anticipating, but this mission has become much more than a simple manhunt. “Do we have a plan?”

“We do; courtesy of the Romulans and Section 31’s clandestine operations a century ago.”

Skeptical, but intrigued, Chris gestures for Jon to continue, multitasking as he splits his concentration between Jon’s explanation of the ship capture technology that Starfleet Intelligence stole from the Romulans a hundred years before, and sending a series of comm messages, recalling the Enterprise’s crew and making the personnel changes that will be necessary for their plan to work. Interrupting only to get Jon to reassign Spock to the Enterprise and, as much as he hates bringing in the SI analysts, accepting Archer’s suggestion that they add the Section 31 team is currently working on adapting the Romulan technology for Starfleet use.

“Can we get those specs and whatever other intelligence you have on Vengeance sent over to the Enterprise combat information center? I can have Jim start a tactical analysis as soon as he’s on board.”

“Whatever you need.” Jon stands and comes around from behind his desk. “I hate sending anyone out to face that…” he gestures at the dark, ominous shape of the Vengeance, still displayed on the wall screens “…but no one has a better chance than the Enterprise and her crew.”

Josh stands as well, putting a hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Best in the ‘Fleet, you know that, son.” 

For most of Chris’s career, he had no idea of where he stood in his father’s estimation – their communication terse and infrequent and rarely positive – but that has changed over the last eighteen months and he responds with a smile and nod. “I do, sir. Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this.” He checks his communicator, notes from Spock, Jim, Sulu, and Chief Engineer Scott all confirming that their departments are fully staffed and then turns back to the senior staff officers, it’s time for him to be on his way. 

“Okay, all the recall orders have been confirmed. We’ll be ready to slip tethers in a little over three hours.” He takes Jon’s hand in a brief, firm shake and then hesitates for a moment until Josh pulls him into an equally brief, if genuine hug. 

“Godspeed, Chris. Just remember, if you don’t come back, your mother will kill me.”


	2. Enterprise

It never ceases to give him a thrill. Every damn time the shuttle swings around the shadowed edge of Starbase One out into the light and _his_ ship comes into view his heart beats a little faster. The sight of her, huge and silent and beautifully powerful. Even tethered to her umbilical she’s all sleek grace and understated power, the pearl-gray luster of her primary hull like a siren of old, calling to him as he pilots this shuttle full of temporarily assigned marines to their new ship. Chris could have beamed aboard, they don’t really need him to act as shuttle pilot, it would have been faster, and given the time pressure they’re under, more practical. But the transporters have their hands full beaming back everyone who’d taken advantage of the serendipitous shore-leave opportunity that had come their way with Enterprise’s unexpected return to Earth. 

And he deserves a moment to savor this return. He’d waited years for this ship, only for her to be ripped from his grasp after only a few hours in command, and he’d given her up with more grace that he’d ever believed he could muster. But the loss of her had cut him to the bone, a pain that time had only recently begun to soften. 

As he banks the shuttle under the starboard warp nacelle and prepares to swing down into the shuttle bay, he opens a channel to docking operations and CPO Singh answers. “Ready to welcome you aboard, Captain. We have an honor guard ready.” There’s a smile in the warm, deep voice as he goes on. “Six sideboys; as per rank.” 

“Thank you, Mr. Singh.” While Chris is the captain of the Enterprise, he’s retaining his rear-admiral rank; qualifying him for an honor guard of six, rather than four, sideboys when he comes aboard. In truth, while he appreciates CPO Singh’s attention to Fleet tradition, all he really needs is to set foot on the deck and know that Enterprise is his to command. This ship that had broken his heart eighteen short months ago, finally restored to him.

By the time Chris makes it to the bridge, Jim is waiting for him and, with a tilt of his head, Chris invites his new XO down to his ready room. “Mr. Kirk, if you please; time for some of that tactical brilliance of yours and, Lieutenant,” Chris starts to follow Jim across the Command console to the ladderway at the port side of the main viewscreen and pauses to address Uhura, “Summon Mr. Spock to my ready room, please.” 

“Aye, captain.” The hesitation in Uhura’s voice is almost indiscernible, just the slightest pause before she articulates the second word, and Chris acknowledges her with a nod. The change in leadership has been dramatic and it’s going to take more than a few hours and ship-wide announcement from Command for them to settle into having Chris as their captain. 

Jim’s back stiffens visibly at the sound of Spock’s name and Chris’s determination to make them resolve their working relationship hardens; they need to learn how to work together. Spock will be critical in helping Jim to learn discipline, and Jim, in turn, could be the only thing that teaches Spock flexibility – without that mutually beneficial exchange it’s unlikely that either of them will ever reach their full potential. Which would be a fucking shame because Starfleet needs these brilliant, unconventional young officers to lead the service into the second half of the twenty-third century. 

And then Chris’s musing is cut short as he’s faced with the forward ladderway, and he watches as Jim calls down the familiar “Make a hole.” – a warning to anyone about to ascend that there’s a more senior officer on their way down – and then takes the treads in two huge drops, bearing most of his weight on the siderails. Chris has spent years perfecting the art of sliding down ladderways, the ability to minimize transit time a fundamental mark of shipboard competence; but for a moment he hesitates, heart racing as he considers whether his bad leg is limber enough for him to accomplish the customary forward slide descent, rather than turn around and take the ladder as if he’s a first-year cadet. Jim looks up from below, expectant and impatient, as he moves away from the bottom step and Chris pushes past the unease, setting his hands on the siderails and pushing off over the drop, exhilaration sliding through him as he navigates the treads with his good leg and reaches the bottom successfully. It’s not the most graceful descent he’s ever made, but it was fast and functional and sews up one more rip in the tattered cloak of his post-Narada confidence.

And then he does it again between decks two and three and this time he grins, joyful, as he hits the deck plate right behind Jim. And if the jarring pain in his good leg suggests that he should probably ease off on the speed of his descent just a little, it’s a small price to pay for the satisfaction of feeling like he’s at home on a Starship again. 

The post-Narada refit had shifted the ready room down two decks, tucked between botany and physics, right where the turbolift and ladderways come together on Deck Three and Spock is just stepping off the turbolift as Chris puts up a palm to the scanner – hoping that it’s already been reset to recognize his biometrics – and the door slides open to admit them. 

“Gentlemen.” Chris makes his way behind the desk, eschewing the informality of the small seating area by the far wall, and gesturing to the chairs opposite, aware that Jim and Spock are avoiding eye contact with each other. He’s not about to address their conflict directly, they’re professionals and he expects them to behave like it, but he needs them to get past their animosity as fast as possible so they can all focus on the mission. “You’ve both seen the initial briefings, you know the mission parameters, this is your chance to get all your questions out of the way.” He can’t quite hold in a wry smile, “I can’t imagine you don’t have a shit load.”

And with that, Jim relaxes a hair, his body unwinding in the chair as he launches into a series of rapid-fire questions. What is behind Marcus’s flight; where did Vengeance come from; how is Starfleet tracking her; how does Harrison fit into the story? When he pauses to take a breath, Chris holds up a hand to forestall any more and looks at Spock. “Anything to add?”

Spock manages to frown and raise an eyebrow all in one, taking a moment before he asks. “How did Admiral Marcus achieve all this without the knowledge of the General Staff?”

Chris shakes his head, it’s a mystery to him too; the lack of oversight is criminally negligent. “But that’s what happens when you have a charismatic sociopath as your Commander in Chief. Marcus should never have been given this much power.” There’s more to it than that of course, but any discussion of Section 31 is classified far above this level, so he pivots to answering Jim’s questions. Explaining how the Inspector General’s office had received notification of an unidentified ship traversing the Alpha Centauri system a few hours after Marcus had gone missing. Further investigation had brought up information on the Vengeance, not fully operational, but space-worthy and now under the command of Alex Marcus with a private-contract crew hired out of the Weyland-Yutani yards on Draylax. 

“So, we know where he’s going?”

“We have a pretty good idea. The Vengeance’s sensors aren’t fully online, so he’s having to hard-ping the sensor buoys periodically. He’s making a straight-line course for the Klingon border. Unless this is a feint to mislead us, he’ll enter Klingon space somewhere between the Epsilon V and Epsilon VI outposts.”

“He is trying to start a war.” Spock’s tone is utterly dispassionate, but Chris has known him long enough to see the strain around his eyes and mouth, the almost imperceptible tension in the fingers resting on the arms of his chair. 

“Or he’s going after Harrison?” Jim interjects before Chris can respond to Spock, impatient as ever, but Chris lets it slide and addresses both possibilities. 

“Either, or both. But we have no idea where John Harrison has gone; just as in London, he used a proxy to carry out the attack on HQ. The DNA in the crashed jump ship was a shuttle pilot from the Mars flight training facility. We have no idea what he leverage he has over these suicide attackers, but it means our last actual sighting of him was in London early yesterday morning. Harrison could be anywhere by now; we can’t be distracted by that. Our mission is to stop Marcus, because yes, if that ship violates Klingon space, we will be at war before the day is out.” 

There’s a moment of silence as the three of them consider the thought of what going to war with the Klingons entails. Ever since the Narada destroyed forty-seven ships off Rura Penthe the Empire has been in chaos. Engaged in ongoing border skirmishes with the Romulans and internal battles between the great houses, the High Council has fallen apart. The more powerful of the great houses – House D’Ghor and House Martok and House Mo’Kai – vying with each other to control the lesser houses and extend their influence over as much territory as possible. War with the Klingons wouldn’t be one war but many, each house competing to annex Federation space and resources, in order to improve their odds of controlling the Klingon Empire. And there would be no quarter for the millions of Federation civilians who live within striking distance of the frontier, cannon fodder in a brutal total war with a society whose synonyms for conflict include _chargh_ and _HoHqu’_ – conquer and slaughter.

“We need to stop him.” He might be stating the obvious, but Jim’s flat, determined statement brings focus back to the room and Chris nods, decisive.

“We do. We’re faster than he is, and we have an ace up our sleeve. Jim, I need you to strategize how we’re going to bring him out of warp and keep him occupied while we disable him – and Spock you have the entire computer division at your disposal, and you’ll be working with the two SI special operations agents that are coming on board.” Indridasson and Vance are Section 31 agents, but that’s classified, and Spock doesn’t have high enough security clearance to even know that Section 31 is currently an operational part of Starfleet.

With Spock and Jim dismissed, Chris leans back in his chair and pulls up the schematics for the Vengeance on the wall screen across from his desk. She’s a beast of a ship. Marcus’s justification for building her might have been defense of the Federation, but this is a ship built for war. Massively, over-weaponed, with more firepower than half the rest of the Fleet combined, she is, frankly terrifying and the first time Chris had seen these displays, on the wall of Archer’s office, he‘d been overcome with a wave of light-headed chill, a sick sense of déjà vu as he remembered the moment that Enterprise had dropped out of warp above Vulcan and come face to face with the Narada. Now, studying the same set of plans, Chris feels the knot of tension in his chest unwind a fraction. Vengeance’s limitations, her reduced speed, her lack of sensors, the skeleton crew – and the manifestly unstable nature of her captain – will all work in Enterprise’s favor. With the Narada they had gone in blind, with Vengeance, Chris knows they have a fighting chance. 

He’s in the midst of dealing with his backlog of messages, scrolling rapidly and prioritizing them, when Jim announces his return.

“You have a tactical analysis for me?” He looks up as Jim hesitates before settling himself in the chair on the far side of the desk, and acknowledges Jim’s discomfort with a small nod. It’s going to take a while for them both to get used to this new status quo. 

Jim nods in return. “I think I have something workable.” And projects a small section of starfield onto the wall to his left. “Now that we know exactly when he’s going to pass Epsilon Outpost Six, I think we have a plan. Obviously, we can use a tachyon pulse to bring him out of warp. But even without sensors he’s going to be able to target us as soon as we fire it, and the closest system for cover is Pi Canis Majoris. We can deploy the _arrenhe'hwiua_ from there,” Jim enunciates the unfamiliar Romulan term very carefully before going on, “But it’s too far to transport in away teams. So…” Jim pauses and brings up a schematic onto the wall screen. “…if we bring him out of warp ourselves, we won’t have time to deploy the ship-capture tech before he vaporizes us. We’re going to have to mobilize whatever ships we have in the sector to do that part.”

He gestures to the wall and uses a light-pointer to move ships into position. “If we can hold off in the shadow of Pi Canis Majoris VIII he’s not going to be able to see us when the other ships drop him out of warp. He’ll be focused on them while we deploy the ship-capture signal. Then, once his shields are down, we can execute a rapid warp-burst across that half-light-year distance and drop right on top of him. It should only take a few minutes.” They’re both looking at the starfield that is Jim’s projected battleground, the Vengeance in red, facing off against half a dozen Starfleet ships and then the Enterprise, a blue marker, disappearing and reappearing as she slips in and out of warp, crossing the almost-light-year distance in a brief moment, that will, in fact, be closer to four minutes in real-time. 

“That’s a lot of exposure for those ships.”

“I know, it feels like we’re offering them up like a sacrifice. But I don’t see any other way of doing it. If Enterprise brings him out of warp, he’s going to target us before we have time to deploy the signal. This way we take control from a distance and then move into position to deploy the boarding parties and support the other ships.”

Chris has been thinking through the problem since he left Archer’s office and Jim’s plan is the only tactically viable solution. Using the small border battle group as a decoy while Enterprise acts from cover to infiltrate the ship capture program. Then concentrating on bringing down Vengeance’s shields so that Enterprise can get into position to send over boarding parties to disable weapons and engines is the only way to avoid Vengeance either annihilating the entire battle group or just ignoring them and running for the border.

“What is your operational timeline?” 

“For implementing the ship capture, Spock is estimating a little over four minutes. Then another four minutes for the warp transit and 90 seconds for the transport infiltration.” Jim grins. “Less than ten minutes. They can’t hold him off that long, they don’t belong in Starfleet.” 

Jim doesn’t mean it. Chris knows he doesn't mean it. At least not the way it sounds. It's just Jim, the way he deals with stress, his inability to take the cares of the world seriously. But Chris doesn’t have the patience for it today. His nerves frayed by the late hour and the certain knowledge of the coming conflict. There will be deaths on this ship before the day is out. And when he speaks, his tone is glacial

“Mr. Kirk. You do understand that when we send these ships and their crews up against Vengeance – some of them are going to die – they’re going to die while we’re sheltering behind Pi Canis Majoris VIII; they’re going to die protecting us when we have to drop our shields to do the infill; and they’re going to continue to die even after we join the battle. Our own people are going to die; on Enterprise, on Vengeance.” 

Silent for a long moment Jim takes a breath and then apologizes. “I’m sorry, sir. That was dumb.” 

“Dumb and crass and a whole bunch of other things but…” Chris relents, “…I know you didn’t mean it the way it came out.” He stretches behind his desk, looking at Jim’s suitably chastened expression, remembering the comment he had made in his office yesterday, about never losing a single crewman in his year as Captain of the Enterprise. Maybe he needs to have Jim shadow the next-of-kins that he’s inevitably going to be writing at the end of this mission. 

He’s about to continue the discussion about mitigation strategies to protect the battlegroup when his desk panel lights up with a communication alert from command. He holds up a finger to stall whatever Jim is about to say and projects the face of Vice-Admiral Chang on the wall screen.

“Admiral Chang, what can we do for you.” Making it clear from the outset that he’s not alone, he allows Chang the opportunity to order the room cleared if what she has to say is classified, but she merely nods. “Admiral; Commander Kirk. Just a last reminder that as soon as you leave Spacedock you will go comms-dark.” 

“I’m aware, Admiral. The crew has been notified and the Comms team has the blackout protocol ready to initiate as soon as we clear the dock.” Given the nature of their mission, the communication black-out isn’t unexpected and Chris isn’t surprised that Admiral Chang is checking that her orders have been implemented. News of Marcus going rogue, and Enterprise tracking him down, is currently restricted to the highest levels of Starfleet Command and only they can authorize how and when that information is circulated to the rest of the Federation. Once the Enterprise leaves all communication will be restricted to priority one encrypted micro-bursts; relayed through a carefully controlled set of shielded communication arrays. 

“Good, because if news of this leaks out – to anyone in the Federation or…” she pauses and leans forward into the viewer, her expression deadly serious, “…to the press, I will personally supervise the removal and bronze-casting of your testicles.” She taps the surface of her desk, “I need a new paperweight.” and then leans back, her point made, 

Chris has known, and respected, Chang Wei-Li for most of his Starfleet career, and he has no reason to believe she’s not one hundred percent serious. “Understood, Admiral.” 

“Good, just so we’re clear.” Then she smiles, just the barest lift of her mouth. “Good luck, I know you don’t need it, but be safe out there. And Chris…” The smile goes slightly feral, her eyes dark with anger. “…bring that fucker back alive; he needs to be incarcerated for the rest of his, hopefully, very long life.” 

“That’s the plan.” 

After signing off Chris laughs at the slightly stunned expression on Jim’s face as he asks, “Did the Chief of SI just threaten to castrate you?”

“She doesn’t mean it.” Chris pauses, thinks for a moment and then prevaricates. “Well, I don’t think she means it.” He stretches in his chair and studies Jim for a moment, before making his next point. “But it’s a good lesson in how seriously we take security protocols.” The more he can emphasize to Jim that Starfleet’s rules exist for a reason, the faster he will learn how and when they can be flexible. 

“But, back to the battlegroup, we need a tactical plan that minimizes their exposure to Vengeance while we’re working on disabling her systems. So, you need to consult with Spock about reducing the _arrenhe'hwiua_ deployment time and then work with Scotty to see how much speed he can squeeze out of the engines for that warp burst. By then I should have ship specifics and you can work on the tactical plan.” 

“I’m on it.”

Chris dismisses him and turns to his messages, which include a missive from Nusseibeh with information on all the ships that will be able to reach Epsilon Outpost Six in time to challenge the Vengeance. The news isn’t comforting, the largest, and most heavily armed, ship is the Cheron, a twenty-four-year-old Thermopylae class heavy cruiser. After ten years as captain of her sister ship, the Yorktown, Chris is intimately familiar with the limitations of her weapons and defense systems; her only saving grace is her over-engineered shield generators, designed to protect against all manner of unknown threats in deep-space exploration. The remainder of the capital ships in the small fleet comprises two middle-aged light cruisers, the Vilnius and the Gamal Abdel Nasser; the Aoraki, a brand-new Annapurna-class corvette, her slightly older sister-ship the Nanga Parbat and two much older frigates, the Sarasvati and the Bab-Iskender. Six patrol ships, pulled out of the fairly generously populated Klingon border fleet, make up the balance of the armada. He frowns at the briefing report in front of him; this is not nearly enough firepower or maneuverability to stall the Vengeance for long and he fears that his earlier admonition to Jim is all too accurate. Ships will be lost today, and a lot of good people will die. 

After sending the ship specs to Jim’s data storage he settles in with a coffee, called up from the mess and delivered by his yeoman, and pulls up the specs on the Vengeance. Half an hour later, he’s studying the ship’s aft armament disposition, trying to ascertain the least exposed angle from which the Enterprise can approach, when his comm sounds and he opens the channel.

“Pike.”

“Captain.” It’s his alpha shift yeoman with a ship’s status update. “All personnel are accounted for and onboard, we’ll be ready to slip tethers in forty-five minutes.”

“Thank you, Mister Quintero; advise Mr. Kirk and have Lieutenant Uhura broadcast the final warning for personal communications. I’ll be on the bridge directly.”

A quick glance at the chronometer set into his desk surface reminds him that it’s now oh-five-forty and if he wants to talk to Phil before they depart, this will be his last chance. He puts the call through and is slightly surprised when it takes Phil a long few moments to answer.

“Sorry, you weren’t napping were you?”

“I wish. No, just checking in with McCoy, he’s got a couple of graduates from the newest batch of corpsmen as part of your emergency back-up medical teams. They’re a little green and very nervous.” He pauses and then goes on. “Well, to be honest, McCoy sounds a little nervous himself. I don’t think he likes feeling like he’s the only adult out there.”

“I think I should be offended by that.”

“It’s not personal – none of us medical types think anyone in command is an actual adult. Too much adrenaline and not enough common-sense.” Phil snorts a quiet laugh. “Don’t worry I told him you were smarter than previous experience would suggest.” 

They both know Phil is referring to Chris’s sacrifice-play with Nero on the Narada, and Chris is gratified, and not a little surprised, that enough time has passed for Phil to make a joke of it.

“They’ll be fine. This is just a fugitive recovery.” Chris almost goes on to say that he can’t imagine that Marcus would fire on Starfleet when he remembers that Phil still thinks they’re going after Harrison. Outside of a very select group, no one knows anything about Marcus and the Vengeance and while his lie is one of omission, he still hates to go there. He doesn’t lie to Phil, not voluntarily, not ever when he can help it. But he doesn’t have the discretion to break security clearance on this. At least this way, Phil isn’t going to spend the next few days calculating the odds of the Enterprise surviving an encounter with the most over-weaponed ship the Federation has ever launched. 

“That’s what I told him.” Phil smiles, leaning forward so he’s looking directly into the screen, “And I’m telling you, I expect to see you back here, in one piece, in two or three days.”

Chris smothers the small niggling voice that’s telling him to make the most of this goodbye, that there’s a more than trivial chance that it might be their last and smiles instead focusing on the need to be reassuring. “You got it. We have a pretty good idea of where he’s gone to ground. We won’t be out there long. You can tell Len’s corpsmen it’s a milk run.”

It’s obvious that Phil doesn’t believe him, but they’ve both played out this charade before and Phil just kisses his fingers and touches them to the screen. “Love you. Think about where you want to go for a break when you get back.”

Chris returns the gesture. “Love you, too. Somewhere hot, with beer.” 

****

The briefing room on Deck Four is crowded and noisy, but the room goes quiet as Chris enters, everyone covertly looking to Jim and then back across to Chris as he sits in the vacant chair by the briefing console – the spot left for whoever is leading a briefing – in this case, the captain. He knows they’ve had to pivot between commanders very quickly, not that uncommon a circumstance, but more awkward than usual when the old captain is still sitting in the room, demoted to first officer. 

Acknowledging the discomfort, Chris nods to the room. “I appreciate how professional you’ve all been adjusting to these new circumstances. We’ll have a chance to talk at length, individually, about what this change in command means for each of you. But right now, we are short on time and we all need to focus on the mission.” He swivels his chair so he’s looking down the table to his two most senior officers, who are sitting beside each other. A good sign. “Mr. Spock and Mr. Kirk have worked up tactical mission briefings that outline the new technology we will be using to incapacitate our quarry, and the plan to infiltrate and board her.” And he gestures to Spock, who stands and uses his padd to project a technical graphic onto the screen.

“ _Arrenhe'hwiua._ ”

Puzzled looks from everyone except Uhura, who offers a translation “Romulan for remote ship-control” and Spock nods “Correct, Lieutenant. The _arrenhe'hwiua_ system was developed in the mid 22nd century and for a brief period it allowed the Romulans to gain the upper hand during the Romulan War.”

Time is of the essence, and Spock outlines the bones of their strategy, using stolen Romulan technology designed to allow remote take-over of another ship to take control of the Vengeance before Marcus can violate Klingon space, explaining the history and operation of the technology in his spare, precise manner. Until he’s interrupted by a question from Jim.

“The Kobyashi Maru, the real Kobayashi Maru; that’s what’s redacted in the reports on the incident at Gamma Hydra, yes?”

Spock nods. “Indeed, that is why we did not blame the Klingons for what happened there. The NX-01 was the target of the operation, the Romulans attempted to draw her into the rescue in order to capture her. Needless to say, that would have been catastrophic” 

“A no-win situation, if ever there was one.” Chris narrows his eyes at Jim, making the point before Spock can; no point in rekindling the latent animosity between them now that they seem to be getting along better. 

Jim takes the peace offering and deflects to another question. “If we’ve known about the ship-capture tech for a hundred years, why are we only now figuring out how to adapt it?”

Chris answers, drawing on the conversation he’d had in Archer’s office only a few hours before. “It’s never been a priority. Everyone, us, the Klingons, the Cardassians, the Orions, knows about it and has hardened their ships to counter it. The only reason we’re working on it now is to provide an emergency override if we have a crisis situation on one of our own ships; we’re working on a back-door, not a weapon.”

“But doesn’t Admiral Marcus know that we’ve got access to this technology?” Scotty raps his fingers on the table in a quiet tattoo as he asks his question. 

“Certainly, he does, but his actions suggest he’s not thinking very clearly. Harrison’s revolt caught him by surprise. You have to understand, many of us have known Alex Marcus for decades. He’s brilliant, but impetuous and unpredictable, and supremely arrogant. I guarantee you he thinks he’s got us outmatched and outwitted. We just need to prove him wrong. Mr. Kirk, tactical analysis, if you please.”

It’s Jim’s turn to stand and address the room, and if he’s uncomfortable with his newly subordinate status, he does a masterful job of hiding it. “If you’ll all turn your attention to the screen, this is the ship we’re tasked with stopping. The specifications we got from the Weyland-Yutani shipyards indicate that she is nowhere near fully operational. Her engines are only stress-tested to warp 7, the telemetry we’ve got suggests Marcus is pushing her to 8.3 but faster than that and he’s risking a full core meltdown. Her sensor systems haven’t been calibrated for warp speed. At anything other than impulse she’s flying blind, the only external navigation he has are our own sensor buoys.”

“So, that is how we are tracking him?” Chekov, the wide-eyed, curly-haired wunderkind of navigation – Chris is eternally grateful that the kid survived the Narada incident – at 17 he’d had no business being on an active duty starship. At least now he’s almost twenty and legally allowed to die in combat. 

“Yep, he’s having to hard-ping the buoys, that’s how we are pretty sure we know where he’s going. We’re faster than her, and now that we know her trajectory, the plan is to overtake her. Once we’re in position, a small battlegroup led by the Cheron will use a targeted tachyon pulse to bring her out of warp. Then it will be up to us to deploy the ship capture technology to disable her. We’ll be operating from the cover of the nearby Pi Canis Majoris system, but we will have to be fast or he’s going to take that battlegroup apart.” 

The Vengeance is outlined in neon blue, her weapons systems in red, the four banks of phase cannons hanging beneath the massive saucer, threatening death and destruction on anything that comes within range. There’s nothing in the ‘Fleet that could come anywhere close to challenging her and the skepticism in the faces around the conference table is entirely justified. 

“The _arrenhe'hwiua_ is going to give us the edge to take down Marcus and his ship from the inside. SI has provided their most recent update of the code and Spock and his computing team are going to refine it with the specs on the Vengeance that we got from Weyland-Yutani. Whatever we come up with has to be as seamless as possible, we’re only going to have one shot at it before Marcus figures out what is going on.”

Jim steps back from the table and takes his seat as Chris picks up the narrative. “All the information you need is in the attached briefing.” Chris motions to their padds and goes on “From a tactical perspective, our best chance appears to be to bring down the shields. Although if anyone has any alternative suggestions, I’m happy to entertain them.” 

“If we can get the shields down, then we target those phase cannons and send in marines to take control of the rest of the ship?”

“That’s the idea.”

Across the table, the Enterprise’s acting Chief of Security raises a skeptical eyebrow and Chris has a moment of regret that they’re going into conflict without Enterprise’s regular Chief. Annie Fitzgerald had been his first choice for Security Chief when he’d drawn up the Enterprise’s crew manifest two years before and she’d apparently worked out very well for Jim in his year-long tenure as captain. Smart as a whip and one of the few Starfleet marine officers to graduate from both combat and command school, she’d first come to his attention as the armory officer on John Aubrey’s Newton. Chris had stolen her for the Enterprise, and that reassignment had saved her when the Newton had been lost with all hands above Vulcan. But, for the last month, she’s been on secondment to the Command School training facility on Arvid IV and, while her replacement is more than ably qualified, Lieutenant Gerry “Cupcake” Hendorff and Jim have a difficult history that Chris can only hope has improved over the last year. 

“You have a question, Lieutenant?”

“Do we know the crew compliment on the Vengeance?” Hendorff taps a finger lightly on the conference table. 

“Not officially; what we do know is that there are no current Starfleet personnel onboard except Marcus. Weyland-Yutani sent us a departure manifest that lists forty-two engineering, gunnery, and navigation/helm personnel, privately contracted through their shipping division at 23:16 last night.”

One side of his mouth quirks up in a cocky, slightly amused twist. “Not ‘Fleet trained? Not exactly a fair fight.”

“I wouldn’t assume anything, Mr. Hendorff. There are plenty of retired Starfleet personnel making a living off that training. Anyway, it’s a big ship and they’ll know as soon as we beam you and your marines in; they’ll have a warning.”

He pauses for a moment, and the rest of the table remains silent, giving Hendorff space to strategize. “Not if we do point-specific transport. If we beam a company into each of the critical locations simultaneously then we can take them down before they have time to react.”

It's workable, although it will strain the expertise of the transporter operators, pinpointing exact locations on a massive ship, with only seconds to compute and fix the coordinates. And speed is going to be of the essence, not just because of the necessity to take Marcus and his crew by surprise, but, as Chekov, who will be manning Enterprise’s shield controls points out, “So, our shields will be down for how long?”

Scotty makes a non-committal gesture with one hand. “Under a minute, if everything goes smoothly. It isnae ideal. But it’s the best we can do.”

There’s a quiet rumble of concern from almost everyone in the room and Chris lets it play out for a long moment before he holds up a hand to still the voices. 

“Okay, that’s the plan then. We will need multiple teams for tactical, weapons, and engineering; a team to cover the computer core and shut down any attempt at self-destruct, and a team for the bridge to take Marcus into custody.” Chris pushes back from the table and indicates that he’s about to wind up the briefing. “I don’t need to tell you all how tight the timing will be on this operation. I want tactical assessments for each operational team on my desk in four hours, you can expect OPORDS an hour before we make system-fall at Pi Canis Majoris. All the information we have on Vengeance is in the mission data files, that should be enough to let you assess your operational profiles and calculate infiltration and secure times. And, I don’t need to remind you, but everyone needs to be in TDUs or OPBlacks, with sidearms.” 

While the marines will deploy in tactical dress uniforms as a matter of course, the engineering and computer teams aren’t usually sent into harm’s way and, while it might be overprotective, there’s no harm in reminding their team leaders that they should prepare to beam to the Vengeance in TDUs or the less bulky, but still well-armored Operational Black uniforms 

As everyone stands, shuffling chairs and collecting padds Chris raises his voice over the noise. “Jim, wait for a minute. We need to contact the Cheron and get Tsheri to pull together a strike team to distract the Vengeance for those couple of minutes while we’re getting into position.”


	3. Vengeance

Pi Canis Majoris is an F-class yellow-white giant in the constellation of Canis Major, home to six planets, including a very hospitable M-class world that the Federation has claimed but not yet settled. As the Enterprise slides into the system and settles into a stationary orbit above Pi Canis Majoris VIII, a massive gas giant with a magnetosphere that will shield them from Vengeance’s sensors when she drops out of warp, Chris turns to his bridge crew and assesses them for a moment. Quiet, efficient, and breathtakingly competent, everyone is focused on their instruments. Spock, most obviously, leaning over his station, the fingers of his left-hand dancing across an instrument panel even as his focus is clearly on the screen in front of him. 

“Mr. Spock, how close are we to deployment?”

“The team has just completed their penultimate simulation, while the code successfully infiltrated the Vengeance’s core systems and modified the programming architecture sufficiently to allow control from Enterprise’s main server, the process took four minutes and sixteen seconds, which is more than enough time for Vengeance to eliminate the ships that are waiting for her at Epsilon Outpost Six.”

“Understood, Mr. Spock, is there any chance of shaving that time.”

“Unlikely, Captain. The computer architecture of the Vengeance is extremely well constructed, with multiple overlapping security systems. I believe if Starfleet’s ultimate aim is to use this system to take over our own ships in an emergency, we will have to create a “backdoor” into the system for easy access. Such a “backdoor” currently does not exist in the Vengeance’s systems. We will have to use a metaphorical battering ram.”

“Very well, Mr. Spock. We’ll just have to time our entry into the fray very carefully.” Chris opens a channel to engineering. “Mr. Scott, we need to be ready to go to warp the moment Spock is sure that the code has successfully infiltrated the Vengeance’s systems. Co-ordinate with each other, gentlemen.”

In the silence that follows Chris directs long-range sensors to focus on the coordinates where the Cheron is waiting to ambush Vengeance. They are less than ten minutes from the time that Marcus will pass by the marker buoy that Enterprise launched to warn the battlegroup that Vengeance has come in range of their tachyon pulse. The tension on the bridge is tangible, an electric vibration made manifest in silence or whispered comments between watch stations. Chris is very aware of the last time he sat in this chair about to face off with an overpowered ship and a psychotic commander, aware of the dread suspended at the edge of his consciousness, waiting for him to let his control slip even a fraction. Waiting for him to give in to the fear of what might be to come. 

But that fear is receding as the wait goes on; this time he knows what is coming, knows that there will be – should be – no surprises, and that’s unexpectedly reassuring. He has no doubts about the competence of his crew, no doubts about the commitment of the sacrificial battle group waiting for the Vengeance; and any doubts he has about his own abilities are fading as he settles into the habitual ambiance and routine of a starship bridge on alert. 

He can feel the thrum of Enterprise’s engines through his boot soles, resting on the deck plates; the familiar low vibration of a ship at rest. The slightly stiff resistance of the synthetic fabric of his chair and armrests; the smooth cool of the operational controls under his fingertips; adjusted for his dominant left hand. 

This is his bridge. This ship was built for him. He’d had input into her design and construction from the very beginning and there is something supremely satisfying in the knowledge that that for a few years at least they will get to fulfill their destinies together. 

And then his musing is brought to a sudden stop as Hannity calls out from the main sensor control panel. “Captain, Cheron has fired her tachyon burst, we have eyes on Vengeance.”

****

The entire ship shudders as they drop out of warp after a very precise three minutes and 36 seconds and the inertial dampers take a pounding as helm and navigation work in concert to bring the ship to a dead stop 25 degrees below and some 10,000 km astern, of Vengeance, just within transporter range.

“Nice work, Mr. Scott.” Chris closes the channel to engineering and addresses his bridge crew. “Mr. Sulu, let’s stay out of the way of those phase cannons. Chief Hannity, status report on the Vengeance.” 

Intuitive and technically brilliant, CPO Ellen Hannity is the Enterprise’s best sensor officer. Unmatched in her ability to detect even minuscule deviations in sensor data changes, she’s another of Chris’s steals. Poached from One’s Yorktown, Chris had paid heavily – in Saurian brandy and the finest Antarean coffee beans – before One had forgiven him. “Aye, Captain. Give me a moment to recalibrate, her shield harmonics are cycling on a non-standard pattern.”

“A moment is all we’ve got, Chief. Lieutenant Uhura, open channel fifty-one.” 

The hairs on the back of Chris’s neck prickle with tension as he watches the firefight playing out on the forward view-screen. The flares of simulated phaser fire and photon torpedo tracks trace lines of blue, green, red and white as Vengeance fires on the ships that have her surrounded, and they return her fire in tight, disciplined volleys, using speed and cunning to keep the massive ship occupied. Playing out in silence, the battle is eerily beautiful, but as Uhura opens the central communication line, Channel 51, the sound of orders echoing through the fleet adds an urgency and a note of controlled panic to the proceedings. Co-ordinating the attack, the voice of the Cheron’s captain comes through, clipped, and confident as she tries to pin down the Vengeance in a net of phaser-fire. 

“Kaifeng, Thule there’s a gap at Z-minus-15, close it. Aoraki, fire at will. Nasser flank starboard and down 20 degrees.” That last order closes the gap between Vengeance and Enterprise, providing cover as Chris waits for confirmation that the Vengeance’s shields are down. As the Nasser swings down into position, the tactical board to Chris’s upper left goes bright with incoming data. 

“She knows we’re here, Captain.” Jim, at tactical, is stating the obvious, there is no way that Vengeance wouldn’t have seen Enterprise as soon as she dropped out of warp, but given her very limited crew complement, Chris had been hoping that the distraction of the rest of the fleet would have given them a little more grace time. “Very well Mr. Kirk, all weapons primed, but hold fire until we are fired upon.” 

Even as Jim acknowledges the command, the secondary sensor chief reports that Vengeance’s aft torpedo banks have gone hot. “Mirroring tracking input from sensors to tactical.”

“Acknowledged Kureshi. Hannity, any progress on Vengeance?”

“We have a sensor-lock, Captain. Her shields are still up, sensor data is being transferred to Science.”

“Mr. Spock?” Chris is reluctant to disturb Spock at the science station, where he’s monitoring the progress of the _arrenhe'hwiua_ technology, all of his not inconsiderable powers of concentration focused on the instruments in front of him. 

“A few more seconds, Captain. Sensors indicate that all three computer cores are compromised, the new code is rewriting the shield generator programming. We will have control in 4.3 seconds.” Rather than just bring down the shields, the decision had been made to actually rewrite the programming to allow control from the Enterprise, a process that will take a few seconds longer but will prevent the Vengeance from rerouting the shield controls though a subsidiary system. 

As they are waiting, Vengeance continues to fire on the ships surrounding her and there’s a collective intake of breath as a burst of photon fire shears off the Nanga Parbat’s starboard warp nacelle. 

“Nanga Parbat withdraw to a safe distance; Sarasvati, close the gap. Wyvern, Avery, Ushant, Consenvoye, defensive pattern Lambda Three, concentrate fire on the external sensor arrays.” Smart. Captain Tsheri of the Cheron, aware that the Vengeance’s shields are too powerful for the older, more limited weapons of the ships under her command, is concentrating fire on the deflector array and the half dozen active sensor arrays, using photon fire across the larger ship’s shields to create focused energy overloads that will blind the Vengeance’s targeting systems. She can still fire, but her hit-rate will be minimal if the small fleet is nimble enough to evade the random bursts of fire. Still, even random fire can be dangerous and a flash from the Vengeance’s ventral hull indicates the launch of a barrage of photon torpedo right as Hannity looks across from her station. “Vengeance’s shields are down, Captain.”

“Acknowledged, Chief.” With only the barest nanosecond of hesitation at the thought that he’s about to drop Enterprise’s shields in the face of twelve oncoming photon torpedoes, Chris opens a channel to Transporter Room One. “Lieutenant Hendorff, you are green to go, Hannity is transmitting the updated sensor data to your station now. Advise as soon as personnel transport is complete.”

“Aye, Captain. Teams are go in 5…4…3…” and from somewhere close by in the transporter room the voice of the Transporter Chief picks up the count. The Enterprise has four personnel transporters with six pads each, and two emergency 22 person-transporters, one in each hull; that’s sixty-eight bodies, each taking ten seconds. With a twenty-second buffer between transports, it will take a little under a minute to get the seven 12-person tactical teams onto the Vengeance. A minute during which Enterprise will have no shield protection. Even a close call from a photon torpedo could cause a hull breach, a well-placed phase-cannon shot could take down the whole ship. Chris closes the channel, his attention shifting back to the bridge and the battle in front of them. “Shields down, Mr. Chekov. Raise them the second the last transporter signal has cleared the buffers.”

“Aye, Captain.” Pale and intent – and so very, very young – Chekov is tight-lipped as he drops Enterprise’s shields, moving fast to cut off the wail of the emergency alert that is designed to remind the Captain that shields are not to be dropped while the ship is at red alert status. 

The red trace of the photon torpedoes is abruptly truncated as they impact the hull of the intervening Nasser and Chris controls an instinctive flinch as the screen flares bright with the energy shedding from the Nasser’s over-stressed shields. The icon representing the ship flickers and then resets and a flick of his fingers across the control pad brings the magnification up enough to see that ship has lost part of her lower engineering hull. For a brief moment, the Nasser hangs in space, shuddering as a series of explosions vents debris and fire, quickly snuffed out in the cold vacuum. Then the fires go dark and the ship rights herself, even as Tsheri is issuing orders across the multi-ship channel. 

“Epsilon Six fleet; target shields are down, I repeat, target shields are down. Aoraki, Vilnius, fire at will, chose your targets to maximize damage to the engineering hull; Sarasvati full spread torpedoes on the forward phaser banks; Nasser remain on post, shield the Enterprise; patrol ships, all weapons hot, concentrate fire on aft-weapons arrays.”

With the screen reset to wide-view, the Nasser shows up as a blue-active icon, and the ship pivots and twists, absorbing a volley of phaser-fire in a few seconds, protecting the unshielded Enterprise, but she’s neither fast nor agile enough to catch all the incoming fire and a spray of five photon torpedoes arcs beneath her and heads for the Enterprise. At 10,000 km Chris knows that they have a little over three seconds to dodge the incoming torpedoes, but the wide spread of the fire pattern will give them relatively little maneuvering room. 

“Evasive, Mr. Sulu; Tactical, countermeasures on my mark.” Chris watches the telemetry on the torpedoes, the voices on the open communication channel, registering but not distracting him and in that moment, calm, focused and utterly sure of his ship and his crew, the last of his Narada-inspired doubts and insecurities melt away and he is finally, for the first time in over two years, completely comfortable in his skin. He is exactly where he should be, doing the work he was born, raised, and trained to do. He watches the range finder on the small screen set into his captain’s chair, the lines of the torpedoes shifting to follow as Sulu drops the Enterprise by Z-minus-one hundred k and slides the ship in a long rolling starboard curve towards the Nasser. Their range-finding confused, two of the torpedoes re-target on the Nasser, the other three remain focused on the Enterprise and another roll, forward this time, doesn’t shake them. It’s time to launch the flurry of bright, infra-red emitting, self-propelled drone pods that will draw the torpedoes off target. 

“Countermeasures, in…” He pauses until the moment is perfect and then continues. “…three, two, one, mark.”

“Countermeasures away, Captain.”

Distracted by the drones the three torpedoes explode harmlessly out of range, but without shields, the debris from the widely separated detonations rattles against the Enterprise’s primary hull and in his peripheral vision Chris can see the damage and fire-control status boards flash with incoming warnings.

“Damage report Mr. Cienfuegos.” He opens a channel to the bosun. A gruff, bearded Cuban, Hector Cienfuegos is noted for his love of fishing, whisky, 20th century B-movies and, above all, the USS Enterprise. Responsible for all aspects of non-engineering ship maintenance, he responds with a reasonably jaunty. “Nothing serious, Captain. Some pin-hole breaches in the starboard warp nacelle and a couple more on Deck Eight; oh, and a small fire on Deck 24 where a power relay shorted out. The nacelle breaches self-sealed and we’ve evacuated Section 003 on Deck Eight.” Satisfied, Chris closes the channel, letting Cienfuegos and his ship-fitters get back to work, and switches his attention back to the forward view screen, just in time to see an energy flare obliterate the Nasser, her identifying icon flickering once more and then going dark. 

Damn, damn, damn. Chris only peripherally knows – knew – the Nasser’s captain, but he was young and promising and didn’t deserve to die, along with an unknown number of his crew of six hundred and thirty, at the hands of their psychotic Commander in Chief. Controlling his frustration, it won’t help him to focus, Chris orders the secondary sensor team to search for survivors in the Nasser’s debris field and then turns his attention to Uhura at communications. She’s monitoring the feeds from the boarding parties, who are already moving through the Vengeance even as the second wave of marines is still waiting on the Enterprise’s transporter pads. 

“Progress, Lieutenant?”

She taps her Fienberger, listening for a moment before answering, “Lambda, Delta and Sigma teams have reached engineering; Beta and Chi have breached the main computer core. The other two are almost deployed.”

“Keep me updated.” He switches focus as Jim, behind him at tactical, warns of another incoming torpedo swarm, but even before he can issue the order for evasive maneuvers, Sulu, his fingers flying over the controls, drops Enterprise in a tight, controlled Z-minus-35 degree spin, that’s just fast enough to trigger the security webbing to deploy and everyone who is in a seat is suddenly tightly secured to their positions. “Nice work Mr. Sulu, keep us moving.”

A flare of light along the aft flank of the Vengeance’s engineering hull marks the demise of the USS Pixiu, but even as her icon goes dark, Hannity reports. “Vengeance has lost her aft torpedo bays.” The patrol ships have done their work, disabling the most damaging – at least from Enterprise’s current location – of the Vengeance’s weapons systems. And then, almost simultaneously, the voices overlapping, Chris hears Tsheri redeploying the remaining patrol ships to run a sustained attack on the Vengeance’s nacelle supports, as Chekov announces “Shields up, Captain. All marines are deployed.”

Even constrained by the tight security webbing Chris relaxes, the frustration and powerlessness of the last few minutes bleeding away as he takes a moment to mentally prepare to bring the Enterprise into the fray. The newest, fastest, and by far the best-armed ship in this little flotilla, she needs to be in the heat of battle, not sitting on the sidelines, hiding behind the rest of the fleet. 

There’s an almost zen-like calm on the Enterprise’s bridge as Chris orders Sulu to bring the Enterprise to 5% impulse speed – anything faster than that will overwhelm the targeting sensors – and bring them in under the Vengeance’s engineering hull, and directs Jim to bring all of Enterprise’s not inconsiderable weapons array on line. 

“Captain Tsheri, Enterprise is green to go, where would you like us?”

Chris might be the ranking officer in the sector, but Tsheri is formally in command of the Outpost Delta Six region and any ‘fleet operations within it, it’s only courteous for Chris to leave operational control of this mission in her capable hands. 

“Glad to hear that, Admiral Pike. If you can target that starboard phaser bank, I think we can take care of the rest.”

“Affirmative Captain. Enterprise is in play.”

What follows is ninety-five seconds of the most intense fire-fight Chris has experienced since the Yorktown faced off against six Orion frigates protecting a slave-trader out of Casperia Prime; and he loves every second of it. With Enterprise’s shields up, and at full-strength, Sulu’s job has switched from evasion and defense to offense, swinging the Enterprise in decreasing arcs under the Vengeance so that Jim and his tactical team can bring both photon torpedoes and phasers to bear on the massive, pendulous phaser banks hanging beneath the dark saucer. At the navigation station Chekov, fingers nimble on the controls, manipulates the shield tolerances to match incoming fire. 

Firing at will, it takes the Enterprise two passes to shear off the two starboard phaser banks, and as she takes a line away from the Vengeance’s disintegrating lower super-structure, she rocks hard, the entire ship shuddering from stem to stern as a volley of torpedoes impacts along the aft port quarter of her engineering hull. The damage once again is minimal, no breaches or fire, just impact damage along the hull, but a sudden, temporary loss of gravity in secondary engineering and the failure of a pressure wall in cargo bay 3 inundates sickbay with broken bones and abrasions and concussion. 

The forward view screen is clearing by the time the Enterprise curves back around to face the increasingly crippled Vengeance. With the withdrawal of the Nanga Parbat and the loss of the Nasser, as well as the Pixiu and the very unlucky Consenvoye — nicked by the last burst of phaser fire from the now detached phaser bank — the field of battle has settled into two isolated points of combat, the Cheron and the Vilnius pummeling the Vengeance’s port phaser bank while the rest of the fleet focuses their fire on the smaller phasers and torpedo bays in the saucer. 

It seems as good a time as any to see if Marcus wants to talk. Chris advises Tsheri of his plans and then directs Uhura to open a channel to the Vengeance. 

A flicker of static on the viewscreen suggests that the ship’s systems are seriously compromised. And then the man himself is on the screen, still in his Admiral staff uniform, his hands curled tightly around the arms of the command chair, eyes electric with manic energy as he shakes with rage. 

“Pike.” He leans forward, spitting the words out. “What are you doing, man. We have to catch Harrison.”

“Sorry, Alex.” No need to address him as Admiral, both rank and position have been suspended pending an inquiry. “You need to stand down before you kill any more of our people.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. Get out of my fucking way. I need to stop him before he gets to Qo’nos.” Standing now, Marcus is pacing furiously in front of his command chair. 

“We’re not crossing into Klingon territory, Alex. The Federation doesn’t start wars.” 

“We have to, he knows too much. Right now, the Klingons are in chaos, their war with the Romulans isn’t going well. If we wait, if he has a chance to pass on all our new weapons technology, they’ll be too strong.”

Even if crossing the border didn’t contravene half a dozen Starfleet regulations, Chris has a deep and intimate expertise in military history and is well acquainted with the disasters that have arisen from preemptive wars that got out of hand. There is no way Marcus could convince him to go after Harrison, even if he has gone to Qo’nos. And Chris isn’t entirely persuaded of that. The Klingons have a long and ugly history with human augments and Harrison must know they are as likely to kill him on sight as welcome him as a defector. 

In his peripheral vision, Chris catches a signal from Uhura. [Bridge insertion teams will be live in five seconds] and without breaking eye contact with the forward viewscreen he taps out an acknowledgment. If he can keep Marcus occupied, Hendorff’s team of marines should be able to bring Marcus down with minimal casualties.

“Alex, whatever Harrison is up to, we need to know what has happened to the rest of the Augments.”

“Khan and his people? Harrison has them. He stole an experimental trans-warp ship – that’s how he got out here so fast. He’s in the Klingon Empire; I know it.” Marcus is scarlet with rage, back in his command chair now, leaning forward to scream at the screen and Chris focuses on him for one more second as he watches Hendorff and his security team beam onto the starboard gallery of the command deck; with a clear field of fire to Marcus. 

“Alex, we are not going to war with the Klingons over this.” 

And then it is over. One well-aimed blast from Lieutenant Hendorff’s phaser-rifle and Admiral Alex Marcus is on the deck and Enterprise’s boarding team has control of Vengeance. 

“Nice work, Mr. Hendorff. Have the admiral beamed directly to Cell A-3 in the main brig. Accompany him and make sure the aural and visual buffers are in place. I don’t want anyone talking to him.” 

From behind him, Jim interjects “Good job, Cupcake.” and Gerry Hendorff just grins as he hitches Marcus’s hands behind his back and snaps on the magnetic cuffs. “You’re welcome, sir. Anytime you want a lesson in close quarters combat, I’ll be happy to oblige.” And Chris has to suppress a smile – it might be unorthodox, but Jim definitely has a way with his crew. 

Rounding up the rest of the Vengeance’s crew doesn’t take long; packed into the Deck 17 mess rooms, with guards on the door and provided with cots and access to the nearby heads, they are secured for the trip back to Earth, where they will presumably be released with no charges as they were contract workers. 

“I hope they got paid in advance.” With the most seriously wounded already stabilized in Sickbay, McCoy has migrated to the bridge and is watching as Chris and Jim coordinate the retrieval of rescue pods from the Nasser, the Pixiu, and the Consenvoye. 

“I’m pretty sure those contracts will be void, that’s Federation money, even if it was in a slush fund.” Chris is busy multi-tasking; calculating Enterprise’s journey time back to Earth now that he has Scotty’s engineering report in – they will be restricted to cruising speed, Warp 6, for most of the trip – and monitoring the ETA of the Asantewaa and the Shenzhou, on their way to cover for the Cheron as she escorts the damaged battle group to Starbase 24. Jim leans over with the fire-accuracy statistics from the targeting computer and Chris nods a pleased affirmative. “That, Mr. Kirk, was some first-class torpedo work. I’m going to owe you and the tactical team a night of beer and pizza after this is all over.” 

“Hm.” McCoy grunts, “Y’all are having way too much fun; you know some of us were elbow deep in other people’s abdomens while you were playing cops and robbers up here.”

As much as he hates to grant McCoy’s objections any credence, Chris knows he’s right; the Enterprise got off lightly, but there are still three bodies in the morgue and half a dozen more seriously wounded casualties in the Deck 7 ICU rooms. He apologizes and Jim clasps a hand on Len’s shoulder. “Sorry, Bones.” And there’s a silent moment of acknowledgment between the three of them; tonight, there will be coffee and scotch and Jim will shadow Chris as he writes the three next-of-kin-letters while Len does his utmost to ensure that no one else joins the KIA list. 

“So, now we just need to deal with that.” Chris gestures to the mortally wounded Vengeance, hanging in the shadow of Pi Canis Major. Shorn of her starboard warp nacelle and with more than a dozen hull breaches, nothing short of a full-service space dock will render her capable of warp travel, but leaving her here, without a crew, would leave her vulnerable to Orion or Tzenkethi salvage operations. 

“She’s too big to tow?” 

As much as Chris appreciates Jim’s creativity, this is just a little too far outside the box. Under normal circumstances, the Enterprise might have been able to extend her warp envelope far enough to encompass the Vengeance and tow her back with a tractor beam. But the dreadnought is too massive, and the Enterprise’s own warp drive too compromised, to make that work. And, to be honest, Chris isn’t sure he would want to bring Vengeance back.

“No, I think we’re going to scuttle her. She was built with Section 31 black ops money. This…” he gestures out towards the forward viewscreen, and his voice hardens, “…is not Starfleet.”

****

Debrief takes for-fucking-ever. The two-hour After-Action-Report to review damage and casualty reports for the Enterprise and the rest of the small battlegroup that had faced the Vengeance, segues into an interminable four-hour meeting with three different SI teams. And Chris is indescribably grateful when Barnett interrupts them to request Chris’s presence before the preliminary board of inquiry that has been convened to deal with Marcus’s crimes. 

“This won’t take long, Chris. Then you can take a break.” Barnett glares at the SI operatives, daring them to contradict him as he ushers Chris out of the room ahead of him.

“Thanks, Richard.” Chris is starting to feel the physical and emotional weight of the last few days, bone-tired, and running on far too much caffeine. Adrenaline had kept him awake and alert for most of the trip back to Earth, much slower than their sprint out to Pi Canis Majoris. Well, adrenaline, coffee, and the need to get his logs, his official AAR and three next-of-kins written. But now the energy crash is imminent, and he could really use a hot shower and a familiar mattress. “I’m not sure how many different ways I can tell them I have no idea what Harrison is planning to do with the Klingons, if that’s even where he went.” 

Barnett huffs impatiently. “They’re just scrambling to cover their asses, as usual. This is an even bigger fuck up than the Narada.” And he gestures to the lift that will take them down to the JAG conference rooms on the fifth floor of Starfleet HQ. It’s hard for Chris to credit that it’s only been two and a half days since this all began in the basement of this same tower. 

True to his word, Barnett has Chris out of the preliminary hearing in under an hour. “You’re off for the next four days, orders straight from the Chief of Staff. Go home, there’s a ground car waiting for you downstairs.”

Chris has still got a psych debrief on his docket, but a quick glance at his comm indicates that it’s been postponed until later in the week, a note from Aditi Sengupta – his Starfleet therapist – letting him know that she had personally intervened with Medical’s Psych division to get him the reprieve. [You need a break, go home and relax. Phil’s waiting for you at Rocket Fuel. He mentioned something about the Caribbean when I stopped by to pick up my macchiato.]

Phil is reading on his padd when Chris walks into the coffee shop on the ground floor of Starfleet HQ and he leans up to accept a brief, chaste kiss, smiling briefly as Chris waves at the barista for his usual caffe stretto with a side of iced water. 

“I somehow don’t think more caffeine is the solution to what ails you, Chris.”

“I look that bad?” Chris slumps down into the chair opposite Phil and stretches out his legs, trying, and failing, not to wince at the twinge in his back and the nagging sciatica in his hip. 

“You look wiped out; have they officially released you?” Phil intercepts the tiny stretto cup from the barista and motions for them to pass the glass of water over to Chris, sliding a small container of analgesic gel strips across the table. “Here, take two.”

“Thanks, and yes, I’m out for the next few days. I still have a psych consult sometime next week, but everything else is tied up. Right now, I want to know where we’re going. Aditi mentioned the Caribbean.” 

With the gel strips already dulling the edge of the nerve pain, Chris relaxes a little more and holds out his hand for the stretto. “I deserve this, hand it over.” 

And Phil relents, frowning. “You didn’t find him?” 

Chris drains the cup in a swift swallow, letting the bitter-smooth-dark-chocolate tones of the Italian roast that he loves linger in his mouth for a moment, gathering his thoughts. This is far too public a place for the conversation that they will inevitably have about Enterprise’s mission to track down Alex Marcus, but he doesn’t want to lie openly. So, he demurs, “Harrison? No, we didn’t find him. No idea where he is. And…” he gestures around the room half full of civilian staff and junior officers, “… this probably isn’t the best place to talk about it.” 

“I wasn’t talking about Harrison, but you’re right, this isn’t the place. And we have a shuttle to catch.” Phil pushes himself back from the table and stows his padd, handing Chris his cane with his free hand. “Come on, the dog is with your mother, luggage is packed and there’s a car waiting to take us to Alameda.” 

The shuttle port at the old Alameda naval station handles all of Starfleet’s suborbital travel and Chris perks up. “So, where are we going?”

“Defiance Cay – I got us a cabin on the outer edge of the reef; three days, no interruptions, and all the beer you can – safely – drink.”

****

Twenty-four hours later Chris is sprawled naked on a sun lounger, a cold beer on the deck by his right hand as a warm breeze stirs the palm trees overhead. He’s well-rested, well-fed, and has enjoyed a long swim in the warm waters that stretch away from this thatched, over-water bungalow. Now, as he rolls onto his stomach and rests his chin on his hands, he contentedly follows Phil’s meandering path along the beach as he walks back from the local market with more beer and a string bag full of locally caught fish and fresh vegetables for their dinner. They haven’t discussed the mission, or Chris’s recent decision to accept the center chair of the Enterprise for the next two years, and he’s a little reticent to be the one to bring it up. 

Even after almost thirty years, Chris still finds Phil a little hard to read when he’s in one of his withdrawn moods, and while there have been no overt indications that he’s unhappy, Phil has definitely been a little quieter than usual since they arrived. Chris shifts again, trying to figure out if Phil’s wandering path from the tideline to vegetation line is driven by curiosity or by his reluctance to come back up onto the deck. It’s entirely possible that Phil is regretting giving Chris’s return to the Enterprise his blessing. He might not know exactly what went down on what has become known as the “Marcus mission” but he knows from McCoy that Enterprise came back with casualties; her own and the ones that they’d rescued from the Nasser. Sending Chris out on short-range missions to train up the young, impetuous Captain Kirk is one thing, sending him back out into the precarious uncertainty that is active deep space duty is another reality altogether. 

“You okay?” As much as Chris would be happy to just ignore the niggling sense of unease, he’s too much of an adult to not give Phil at least a chance to broach whatever is troubling him. 

He gets a relaxed smile in return as Phil steps up onto the deck. “Yeah, I’m good. I’m going to put these in the cooler and take a shower; you go back to sleep, you look comfortable.”

And now Chris is really confused. 

Not that going back to sleep is really a possibility if Phil’s going to shower. From this part of the deck, Chris can angle himself to get an uninterrupted view of the bungalow’s outdoor shower, a beautiful curve of tropical hardwood with a showerhead, set directly over a grate that captures the gray water for the hydro-recycler. Because if Phil really is good, then the other thing they need to take care of is the singular lack of sex in the last 24 hours. It’s not like them, not when they are on good terms with each other, and definitely not when Chris is just back from a mission that may, or may not, have been hazardous. So, he rolls over, turns his head so he can see the shower, and settles his hands on his stomach, just the slightest frisson of anticipation in his spine, and he waits. 

He’s half-asleep by the time a naked Phil walks out the screen doors, too comfortable to do anything other than hum a small noise of appreciation and quip “Nice ass.” And Phil laughs, “You just stay there, I’ve got something for you when I’m done here.”

“Another beer?” Chris stretches, sun-warmed and relaxed, his cock stirring ever so slightly, signaling an interest in the long, elegant body that has just stepped into the spray; appreciating all the lines and planes and lean, lightly furred muscle going sleek and dark in the water.

“Better than beer.”

Chris grins, sly. “What’s better than beer?” And then sighs out a long, aroused breath as Phil slides a soapy hand down his chest and between his legs, coming back up with a firming cock in his hand. “Okay, that’s better than beer.”

He goes to roll off the lounger and Phil pauses his stroke. “No, I said stay there, I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.” His hand moves up, thumb sliding foamy across his glans, no foreskin to disguise the mushroom curve that blooms as he gets fully hard. And Chris is suddenly, very, very aroused, his own cock swelling against his thigh and it’s a matter of a few centimeters to slide one hand over and wrap it around the thick length. 

“No touching.” 

Chris grits his teeth in frustration, he should have expected this, but there’s a tone in Phil’s voice, implacable and commanding, that he can’t ignore. He takes his hand away, laces his fingers together across his belly, and sinks into the slow-building tension generated by watching Phil masturbate under the shower. At almost sixty-five Phil is all lean wiry strength, and thanks to a little sun-worship today, covered by pale tan skin and a generous coat of silver fur; thicker and whiter on his chest and belly and groin. Long, strong fingers wrap tight around his cock; Phil isn’t as long as Chris, but he’s very thick and his fingers barely meet around his girth as he strokes himself hard and angles so the water cascades off his fist.

“I can think of somewhere else you can stick that. It’ll feel better than your hand.” Every nerve in Chris’s body is quivering at the sight of Phil leaning back against the single wall of the shower, legs braced as he speeds up the stroke of his soapy hand on his cock, his other hand cupped around his scrotum.

“Not necessary.” Whatever else Phil was going to say is cut off by a deep groan and he slows down for a moment, gathering his control. “I know my refractory period is pretty long, but I plan to fuck you later; this is just an amuse-bouche.”

Another flash of electricity sparks up Chris’s spine at the thought of being fucked, but he’s an adult, he can control himself and he reluctantly capitulates, sublimating his own rising arousal as he focuses on Phil; watching rapt as his husband slows his pace, setting up a torturously slow cock-screwing motion with his dominant hand, using the other to massage his balls. After interminable minutes, where Chris can feel the sweat dripping down his sides as he thinks Phil is never going to actually climax, Phil relents. Bending one leg up, resting his foot on the deck rail he slides two fingers into the shadow between his thighs and pushes deep.

“Oh, fuck, you’re killing me, Phil.” It’s all Chris can do to stay on the lounger; he desperately wants to replace Phil’s fingers with his own, push deep into the hot, tight channel, open Phil wide and slide in his own cock which is now achingly hard, seeping pre-cum onto his belly in thick steady, drips. 

And then Phil is coming, his back arching as his cock spasms, wet pulses of come dripping from his fist before they’re washed away by the shower. 

It takes all of Chris’s not inconsiderable will power to not touch himself while he waits for Phil to recover. Governing his breathing so that he can control the desperately urgent need to come; and he’s briefly chagrined that, whatever Phil has planned, is going to be over very fast, because he’s teetering on a knife-edge of orgasm and he hasn’t even been touched yet. 

And then Phil turns off the shower and walks, dripping, across the deck and Chris flexes his fingers, drawing Phil’s attention to the fact that they are still crossed and resting on his belly, even as his cock bobs and sways below his navel. 

“Well, haven’t you been a good boy?”

As tempting as it is to snap back with a witty response, Chris can see the intensity in Phil’s gaze and he settles for an arch smile, just this side of deferential, teasing with an implicit promise of submission. Lifting his hands above his head, Chris draws a breath as Phil straddles the lounger and then leans down, lowers his head and, in one long slide, takes Chris’s cock all the way down his throat. 

Holy fuck it’s exquisite; hot, wet, and slippery as Phil hollows his cheeks and sucks Chris deeper and his whole body sparks with sensation. 

“Not going to lie, I’m going to come so fast.” Chris groans, his body shuddering as  
Phil pulls back until he’s suckling lightly on the fat tip of his cock, and then pulls off with a long lick to the shaft. “Come as soon as you like.” And, with a grin, he sets to work in earnest and all of Chris’s resolve vanishes as Phil swallows, his throat constricting around Chris’s cock, once then a second time, and a third until Chris is white-knuckling the wooden edge of the lounger and whimpering quietly. One spit-slick finger slips down against his perineum and then Chris is lost, coming in a long spasming arc; his vision whiting out as Phil pulls off fast and he feels a spray of semen spatter hot across his chest and belly. 

He’s still panting when Phil pulls back to sit on the edge of the lounger, rubbing a hand lightly across the damp, sticky mess on Chris’s stomach. “Don’t move, I’ll clean you up and you can sleep while I make us some dinner.”

Barely able to open his eyes, Chris nonetheless tips his head so he can watch Phil walk across to fetch a wet towel from the shower. “Not that you’re not always nice to me, but this seems unusually solicitous.” 

Phil pauses and then comes back to sit on the lounger, wiping at Chris’s belly as he admits. “I know I’ve been kind of quiet since we left yesterday.” He pauses and Chris has a momentary flash of anxiety, Phil doesn’t have a habit of presaging bad news with a blow job, but there’s a first time for everything. 

“I had a change of heart while you were away.” Not the words Chris wants to hear but he controls his anxiety, waiting for the other shoe to drop and then Phil grins, wry and fond. “And, while you were in debrief, I had a conversation with McCoy and made a decision.”

“McCoy?” Chris isn’t deliberately trying to deflect, but he’s not sure how McCoy figures into Phil’s decision that he’s changed his mind about Chris going back out into the black. 

“Yeah, I figured it would be only polite to ask if he minded giving up his Sickbay for a couple of years while I come back as Enterprise’s CMO.” 

It takes Chris a long moment to parse what Phil is saying, and a man less secure than Phil might have felt the need to fill the space with more words. But that’s not how they work, and the silence stretches until Chris finally asks. “Are you fucking kidding me? I thought you’d made your mind up to stay in San Francisco?”

Phil laces his fingers into Chris’s and nods, slowly. “I did, and then I changed it when you went out there and came back with dead people.” He looks up into Chris’s face, and draws their interlaced hands to his lips, kissing the knuckles softly. “One of those dead people could have been you.” More kisses across his knuckles and Chris has to swallow hard around the lump in his throat. As much as they’ve loved each other over the decades, he would never have believed that Phil would go back on his vow to never be Chris’s CMO again. Their last rodeo had ended very badly, had almost broken them, and Chris had promised never to try to coerce Phil into coming back out in the black with him again. 

Two last kisses, this time on the pulse points of his wrists and Phil whispers. “And I’d never forgive myself if you were out there injured and I wasn’t there to keep you safe.” 

**Epilogue … to come… more porn and conversation.**


	4. Epilogue

Phil still tastes of dessert; the sweet, slightly singed flavor of caramelized bananas and rum, and Chris leans into the kiss, fingers curled into the short strands of silver hair as he holds Phil in place. They linger over the exploration; nipping gently and then diving deep, long and hot and slick, until they’re both out of air and Chris breaks off, laughing quietly. 

“Damn, it was worth marrying you just for the food.”

Phil leans back on his arms, his legs dangling into the sea and asks, arch and amused. “So, what do I get out of it?”

They are sitting naked, on the end of the short dock that stretches out from the bungalow verandah, enjoying the warm breeze and slightly humid sea air of the early evening. It’s just after sunset, the sub-tropical sky shading from velvet black at the horizon to dark turquoise over the low hills behind them; the stars a brilliant multitude above. Chris stretches, a long, easy motion, lying back on the decking planks with his hips canted up and his arms above his head, and laughs, “The body.” For all his physical trials over the last two years, and all his occasional insecurities about it, Chris is in remarkably good physical condition, and thirty-six hours of sun, sleep and sex have erased most of the stress of the last few days and left him feeling better than he has in months. 

Propping himself up on his elbows, Chris watches as Phil smirks and shifts onto his side, reaching over to trace his fingertips lightly along the muscles of his thigh, skating up towards his groin where his cock is just beginning to stir. “I get the body, do I?” Fingers curve and slide around a warm firm swell of muscle, squeezing gently. “And what do I get to do with it?” Leaning in closer and laying a kiss on the sensitive skin in the hollow of Chris’s pelvis. 

Reflexively, Chris shivers and lets his legs fall open, biting back a quiet groan as his cock firms a little more and Phil leans over to lick, hot and wet, over the slow swell of flesh. “Anything you want.” His head falls back as Phil continues to nuzzle in the coarse curls at his groin, tongue, and lips sending little sparks along his spine as they play over the sensitive skin. 

“I want…” a pause as Phil licks up the, still mostly soft, shaft and over Chris’s foreskin, “…to…” another pause and Chris twitches as the tongue insinuates itself into the opening, warm and wet against his glans, “…fuck you…” the tongue presses gently at the meatus; making Chris squirm at the sensation as his cock firms. “…until neither of us…”, his lips enclose the whole tip of Chris’s penis now, suckling gently and pulling off with a soft, wet sound that makes Chris twitch again. “…can walk.” And then Phil leans up, his hand wrapped around Chris’s cock, stroking firmly, his face deadly serious, although there’s a hint of humor in the lines around his eyes, “I want you to know that body is mine; I want you to fucking feel it. I want you to beg me to let you come as I fuck you.” 

It’s been a long time since that first debauched weekend, when Phil persuaded Chris that being fucked could be the most liberating sex imaginable. Thirty years later they are older and slower and much, much wiser, with stamina that will allow them to stretch this out for hours and Chris grins as he sits up and leans in to kiss Phil, fast and hard, “I think we need a bed if we’re going for that kind of athleticism.”

The moon has risen by the time they collapse, exhausted on the cool sheets, wrapped in a damp, naked embrace, and breathing hard and Chris luxuriates in the feel of Phil’s body plastered up against his own; sweat-slick and flushed. They lie together for a long time, post-orgasmic lassitude sliding into sleepy indolence as the sound of the breeze and the lazy slap of waves on the beach provides a rhythmic accompaniment to the soft whisper of their synced hearts and breath. But Chris has too much nagging at the back of his mind to relax completely and eventually he slides out from Phil’s arms and goes in search of water. When he gets back Phil is leaning up on the pillows, watching him with a familiar, slightly skeptical frown. “So, what’s on your mind?”

Chris hand over the water and slides back into bed, relieved that he finally has the opening he needs to have this conversation. 

“How did you know it we were hunting Marcus, that was supposed to be classified.”

“I didn’t, I only knew he’d gone missing.” Phil pauses and before Chris can ask how he even knew that much he volunteers “Vicky, she of the spies in every department, including the Chief of Staff’s office.” Vicky Turnbull, Starfleet Surgeon General, and the most well-connected member of the General Staff. “Anyway, once we knew that much, it was pretty clear that was who you had gone after.” Phil shifts against Chris and pulls the sheet up over them curling closer. “But I didn’t have any idea about what you were up against, I didn’t find that out until I was in McCoy’s debrief.” His head tucked under Chris’s chin he shivers, and Chris pulls him tight, an oily thread of guilt sliding through him, sharp and sickening. 

“I’m sorry, it was classified.” 

“I know, I’m not blaming you.” Phil pulls away slightly, just far enough to hold Chris’s gaze, one hand stroking gently along the stubble of his thirty-six-hour beard. “But it made me realize how little I would know if you went back out there without me. I can’t do that, Chris. I can’t put myself through that for two years. Not knowing if you’re going into danger.” He pauses, a long moment of silence that Chris respects, giving Phil the space to say what needs to be said. So much love and sincerity and heartfelt honesty in his eyes, gone dark and slate in the dim light. “Maybe if I hadn’t already spent ten years watching you put yourself on the line, I’d be able to convince myself that Jim and Len and Spock could keep you safe. But, I’m just enough of a narcissist to think that I’m the only one who can do that. The only one you’ll listen to if you need to take a step back.” His mouth quirks up in a wry little smile “The only one who can guilt you into taking care of yourself, as well as everyone else.” He leans down and Chris stretches to meet him in a soft, sweet kiss that lingers for a long moment. “I love you and I can’t bear the thought of you dead or dying on some god-forsaken backwater without me there to pull your ass out of the fire.” 

Chris closes his eyes, swallowing hard against the wave of emotion, rubbing his face against Phil’s palm, lips brushing softly over the skin; guilt warring with relief. He knows how much it is going to cost Phil to sign on as his CMO; how heavily the stress and fatigue of being the primary physician for not just him but for a crew of four hundred, constantly in harm’s way, will weigh on him. And a tiny part of him knows that he could – if he really, really wanted to assuage the guilt, he could – walk back his decision to take back the Enterprise. But any chance of that realistically evaporated the moment he was piped off the shuttle by CPO Singh and his six shuttle-technician NCOs. Phil maybe too much of a narcissist to trust Chris’s care to anyone else, but Chris is too much of one to give up his ship. He takes a long breath, collecting himself and then smiles, self-deprecating and slightly circumspect. “I would never have asked you to come with us; the only thing I can promise is that I will listen to you this time. I will never, ever put the center seat ahead of you.” Chris isn’t promising that he won’t put himself in danger, that there won’t be times when duty requires him to make choices that Phil will hate; they both know that isn’t possible, but Phil will come before career; and as much as they have committed to each other in the past; this is new; Chris has never outright promised to put Phil first, not when he’s had a command. 

“That’s all I’m asking.” Phil stretches and yawns, pulling Chris in for a long tender kiss; both of them too tired to make it anything other than sweetly affectionate. “Now, if you’re done being noble, I could use some sleep.”

Chris is tired too, but there’s still one thing nagging at the back of his mind and he shifts away, leaning up on one elbow as he asks. “So, how did you persuade McCoy to hand over his sickbay for two years?”

Phil chuckles softly. “I didn’t have to try very hard, that mission of yours scared the fuck out of him. When I did his debrief, he made it really clear that one of his least favorite things is playing trauma surgeon.”

“Yeah, he was on the bridge in the after-action; complaining about being elbow deep in people’s abdomens.” Chris traces his fingers over Phil’s pectorals, teasing the thick spread of chest hair. “He was pissy as hell, but that’s normal for him. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“He’s a neurosurgeon, Chris. The best there is, but he could use a couple of years gaining proficiency in a broader range of cutting expertise; cardio-thoracic, ortho, field surgery; burns; trauma; all the things you run into when you’re the only medical facility in the sector.” Phil stills Chris’s hand and kisses it again. “So, I made him a deal. He can be my chief surgeon for two years. I’ll take the responsibility of CMO, and deal with all the general practice medicine; he will be my cutter. My sawbones.”

“And he’s happy with that?”

“As happy as Bones ever is.” Phil laughs, “Yeah, he’s happy with it. I don’t think he liked the idea of being responsible for you any more than I did.” 

Chris nods. “Good, we can deal with shuffling quarters when we get back.” And he lies back, content to stare at the decorative mosquito netting that hangs from the ceiling, briefly distracted by the complexities of arranging shared quarters on a ship where four of the senior officers are married to each other, until Phil turns out the light and pulls the sheet up across them, ordering quietly. 

“Less thinking, more sleeping.”


End file.
